Boot Virus on a DDO Hard Drive question?

[tekxone]

I think I have a Boot Sector virus.
I am using Maxtor's Disk Drive Overlay(DDO)
partition utility MAX-BLAST on my 200-Gig HD.
I've got 2 partitions (C-Drive and D-Drive)
Using Windows-98 and a duel fire-wall.


Symptoms:
From what I've read it is a new virus, that currently
cannot be detected/fixed by any anti-virus software.
First it corrupts files on "C-drive" and then other
files on "D-drive" and other physical hard drives
into unreadable characters (I am at this stage) and then
eventually corrupting HD's Volume label and FAT into
what someone has labeled "KLINGON" (not at this stage)
I've been told that just formatting the HD will not
work. (although I have not tried it)

Already tried the MAX-Blast partition software deleting
all corrupted files and re-installing Windows-98, the
damm virus was still there. I have full access to the
HD, other than the corrupted files and the new corrupted
files it continues to create and spread!
(Booting in DOS does not seem to spread the virus)


-Does anyone know of a way to fix the BOOT SECTOR of
a Disk Drive Overlay(DDO) without corrupting the files
on the HD? "Fdisk /mbr" won't work on a DDO HD.

-Is there a freeware utility to fix the Boot Sector
of a DDO HD from a virus suchas this?

-Does anyone have this virus or know how they got it?

-Does anyone else have any suggestions on a fix??

Thanks...

 

[micker377]

I've never heard of a partition fix, without re-doing the partition and a format. This is one of the reasons using a "DDO" is not recommended. Why did you need to use a DDO?

 

[edfair]

You may be able to resolve it by using a disk editor and rewriting the sector. But it is going to require that you know what is really supposed to be there.

I'm suspicious of virii that nobody can detect, particularly ones that progressively corrupt data. There are too many hardware failures that can do the same thing.

Maxblast zero fill should resolve the problem if it really is a bootsector virus, but that will require a partition and reload sequence.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[garebo]

I would suggest you simply try and get what data you can save saved and then go as Edfair suggested, use maxblast and use the zero-fill option, has worked for me in the past. It means you lose your data but at least maybe you save the hard drive.

Dont take this personal, but overlay software is junk, pretty much nobody uses it anymore as it always causes trouble a bit down the road. Overlay is usually chosen as the existing bios will not see the full hard drive. Well, there are 2 ways around this problem that dont involve overlay.
One would be to go to your motherboards mfgr website and see if there is a newer bios for your motherboard, and if so, then download and install it and it may then see your full hard drive.

If you have the latest bios installed and your bios does not see the full hard drive, then its time to get yourself a pci controller card. They are commonly called ultra cards, promise ultra, ultra controller cards, pci controller cards, even perhaps ata controller card, along those lines. There is a 66 version and a 100-133 version. It depends on your motherboard, bios, and your hard drives which one you need, but you can simply get the 100 version and it will work on 100 or 66 anyway. Depending on which card you get, you will find that the card has either 2 or 4 ide connections. This is where you install the ide connector to your hard drive and the card has an on-board bios that takes over from your current bios and will see the full hard drive and then you dont have to use overlay software.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips