Help me remove probable mbr virus!! 1

[Guest_imported]

Hi folks. I have a big problem with my main machine. Here is a quick history for you:
A couple of weeks ago my pc started acting really funny. I was getting lots of application errors like "blah.exe has caused an error and will be closed by windows" or something similar. It was also doing seemingly random reboots when I tried to open certain apps or windows explorer. FYI, I was running Windows 2000 with all the latest upgrades and patches. These symptoms got progressively worse as time went on. I scanned for viruses using NAV2001 with latest defs, but came up nothing. So I figured it was my hd dying, so I swapped it out with a new hd. I wanted to back up some data so I made the first hd slave and the new drive master. When I tried reinstalling Windows on the new drive it was having trouble reading some files from the cd. After a few re-tries I managed to get the OS installed but soon after all the same problems started happening again. I asked someone about it and they said it might be the IDE controller on my mb, so I got an IDE card, plugged the drives into it to see what would happen. The same stuff happened. So I thought maybe it was just a flaky mb, so I got a new one and swapped the old one out. At first I managed to reinstall the os and actually back up some stuff, but quickly the problems started reoccuring again.
It was only then that I figured it had to be a virus, probably an MBR one or similar that had infected my drives.
After doing some research I got a fix for the Monkey virus, booted from floppy (which is clean) and applied the fix. Alas, it was not the Monkey virus
I also tried FDISK /MBR and low level format but these didn't work either...

So my questions are:
1. Is it an MBR virus, and which one(s) could it be?
2. What can I do to fix the drives without an OS?
3. What can I do to protect my MBR from it happening again (since NAV2001 with AutoProtect didn't seem to help)?

Any info would be appreciated as this has been going on for weeks with no resolution in sight!

Thanks!

A

 

[edfair]

You could go to the FAQs and link to virus help, or you could go to google and search for virus removal or use google and search for housecall, the trend micro downloadable virus check.
There are several that can do this.
But then again, this might not be a virus. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

But HouseCall requires the infected pc to access the net to enable the virus scan. My infected machine is out of action, no OS, no net connection, nothing.
If possible, please give me an alternative.

Thanks.

 

[edfair]

Dug thru the original again. Doesn't sound like a virus at the install point. Sounds more like memory. How about getting a dos, boot with a himem test setup in the config.sys.
At least to the format point the machine should be exactly the same each time. And no errors at any point through the format shold ever come up unless something has broken or you do something wrong. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

What do you mean by "sounds more like memory"?
When the machine boots and the BIOS does the memory test I don't get any errors or see less memory or anything.

 

[edfair]

There are things that happen to memory that affect how programs run. The boot up test for memory basically writes to some memory locations and verifies that it has written there but does little else. It is not a test for flaky memory. In fact , you could remove 90+% of memory and the sizer would work. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

Dude, you rock! Where do I send the fruit basket??
I found a freeware utility to test ram called MemTest-86. I ran it on my dead machine and it found a bunch of errors with the memory. Afterwards I made an educated guess on which chip might be flaky and took it out. I ran the test again and no errors came up. Voila! all the problems have gone away. I managed to reinstall the OS and cd burning software without a single error!

Thanks so much! I'm quite relieved it wasn't a virus or major hardware problem.

A