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Boot sector virus

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D17S

Technical User
Oct 10, 2005
8
US
It appears I picked up a boot sector virus in my XP install. Seems like a boot sector virus is one tough nut to crack. Any ideas?

Thanks
 
D17S,

If you have an AV app & it is not cleaning this I would try the online scan at the trend micro site:


Or Look at bcastner's excellent Faq:
faq608-4650

If this is not successful, and you know the virus name that you have picked up. With caveats you could try Booting from a diskette that contains Fdisk at the A:\> type FDISK /MBR.

Last resort, "ZERO" out your HD and start over.

Hope This Helps

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
 
Haven't seen a boot sector virus in many years. Why do you think that's what it is?
 
Thanks for the replys,

bygeek
Looks that way because when I run the Acronis MBR cleaner boot disk and choose repair the problem goes away, for a day. The problem recurs in a day or 2. It got both my main and backup (Ghosted) HDs. Really don't know. Good question.

rvnguy
I run Trend as my normal AV, then tried Panda and Macafee on-line too. No joy. I'm normally allerted that the problem has reoccured by seeing backward keys-strokes. ABC types out CBA. Also all drop down meuns flicker and will not select anything but the first selection. Feels like someone is leaning in the up-arrow key. Also, all programs double click, then start as some other single program. Last time it was "trashcan." -Puter becomes unusable and must be shut down.

The first first time this happened I had the "XXXXs write" boot disk out to start a complete rebuild, but I happened to see that acronis MBR fixer in the stack. Ran it because the box was gone anyway. But it worked! . . . for a day, then the problem recurred. I'm on the bad disk now, but only because of the MBR fix temporary reprieve.



Thanks again


 
A few jumbled notes in no particular order.

If you use a 98 or ME Startup Disk (even though your partition is NTFS) you may be able (not sure) to just about access the MBR (and nothing else) and remove the Trojan from there either with Fdisk /MBR or maybe even the first part of a DOS virus scan from any Emergency Scan Floppy .


Deleting MBR on NTFS Partition
thread779-684449

Recovering NTFS Boot Sector on NTFS Partitions


If it is a virus infection you may need to boot to the Recovery Console and fix the boot sector (fixboot) to get rid of the boot sector virus, or use one of the floppy based recovery solutions.








"Go to look for MBRWORK in the free tolls and download
it, put it on a DOS floppy (one made by formatting in XP and taking the
MSDOS Startup disk option will do).

Boot that and run MBRWORK
Use options
1 (to back up the current state, so it could be restored with 2)
3 then 4 to delete the current code and tables
there will then be a possibility of using
A
which will scan the disk for 'signatures' of partitions and rebuilt the partition table then
5
to install standard MBR code so the disk could be booted


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)"




 
Great group here. Glad I found ya'll. I'm off on the quest for a MBR boot sector repair method. Great information. Many thanks.
 
I had a NTFS HD XP Pro with a Boot Sector problem that the repair concel fixboot fixmbr and a couple repair installers did not help, I converted the HD to F32 using partition magic witch fixed it. It was the weirdest problem I have ever seen. The computer would start to boot only for a second then would lockup displaying what looking like 2 small electrical plugs.
 
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