Virus alert.

[razled]

Help I have discoverd I have a virus called Anti Cmos.avg
Norton has found it and cured it. It has been on my start up disk which I have been using to try and setup a problem laptop with a pcmcia cd rom drive, which wont install !
How do I clean my laptops hard drive, Its got well think its got dos on it, or can get dos on with now clean start up disk.
But everything I copy from a to c gets corupt and laptop refuses to boot with no disk in
How can I clean this hard drive ? i have nortons but it wont install in dos is there a program I can download/buy anyway that will install and run in dos from a floppy ?

 

[TerrySr]

I recommend F-Prot for DOS, can be found at

http://www.bootdisk.com.

Just be sure and use a clean boot floppy when you boot and run the anti-virus. It works.
Hope this helps..

 

[razled]

i have found f-port and downloaded, but it is biger than 1.44 m disk.
will try boot.com, i went via goole, thanks

 

[razled]

i have been to boot.com, which do i download ? there are so many,
thanks in advance

 

[Mulga]

razled,
I would advise you stick with f-prot, it is really excellent. I get a lot of clients with virus or suspected virus problems and use it frequently. I know it is bigger than 1.44 MB but you can download it and put it on 2 disks, the big definition file on one and the rest on another. You then copy the whole lot to a folder on the hard drive and run it from there. Make sure you get rid of that infected start up disk and do not use it under any circumstances.

 

[razled]

I have tried that but every thing I have copied accross to the hard drive gets corrupted.
Hence I need somthing to go on 1 disk ? is this possible ?

 

[Mulga]

Following quote from Trend Micro re Anticmos

<This memory resident boot virus infects the hard boot sector and stays in memory after booting a system from an infected floppy disk. Thereafter, it infects all unprotected floppy disks that are accessed in the infected system. It has a destructive payload of trashing the cmos RAM and Hard Drive C:\.>

If I read that correctly your motherboard and HDD may be toast
However Symantec are more hopeful, their instructions as follows. Make sure you follow them exactly.

<Insert an uninfected, write-protected, bootable disk that also contains the FDISK program into the floppy disk drive, and then restart the computer.
2. Type the following, and then press Enter:

fdisk /mbr

3. Remove the floppy disk, and then restart the computer>

 

[razled]

thanks will try, howeber i dont hold much joy as i have done an fdisk and format C:/u/s to no joy, may be the fdisk /mbr will have more success.
thanks again, will try now.

 

[Mulga]

It may well work, fdisk /mbr rebuilds the master boot record which is corrupted by boot sector viruses like yours. Normal fdisking and formatting do not touch this area.

 

[razled]

Have tried, and it still failed.
I have managed to extend the ramdrive by editing the config,sys file on the start up disk and copied all the f-prot files to the ram drive.
When I run f-prot it takes about 1 second to do the scan of the &quot;full&quot; disk ? and says nothing is corput ? Howevever when I scan the start up disk it takes about 26 seconds, so is f-prot actually scanning the hard drive or just the ram drive , I have changed the options to &quot;scan local drives&quot; to scan *.* etc, all come back with no faults or suspious files found ?
Also If I do fdisk/mbr it takes 1 second ? is this right ?
Also I have done scandisk, it comes back saying several problems, re-installed x number of files and also done a surface scan, scan disk say a ok (after about 5 mins of scanning, however when I do fdisk (4) view current partion deatils I get f@t16 as the defintion.( right after scan disk fixed it ?)
Is this a virus or a &quot;broken&quot; hard drive after all ?
Is there any smaller AVG programs i can run striaght from a sinlge floppy to prove either way ?
Strange but true !

 

[smitee]

razled

Try this &quot;bootdisk&quot;..has a virus cleaner

http://www.startdisk.com/Web2/ubd/ubd.htm

smitee

 

[razled]

have download the u98b files, this works fine, Have tried download the f-prot virus scanner boot disk, but the u98 thingy dosnt reconise it ? have extracted 3 times, so must be a bad download version,
I have done the disk manager section and installed the the typical MBr which seems to work, but as soon as i format the disk it replaces the master boot record ? and cannot transfer any files accros, this must be a goosed hard drive or is the virus still there ?
Still have not managed to get a virus scan / inoculation ?

 

[prescot9]

razled,

There is a lot of great advise here so far, I just want to toss in my 2 cents worth:

fdisk /mbr, should have been the ticket, as has been suggested - but since it hasn't worked, you can try it again AFTER using the software from Maxtor, called &quot;MaxBlast&quot;. I have found that running MaxBlast to set up the drive, happens quickly, thoroughly, and sometimes improves bad sector counts!

Download &quot;MaxBlast Plus&quot; from

http://www.maxtor.com,

and the executable will make a bootable diskette, WRITE PROTECT IT!

Boot up on it, and it will let you know the condition of the disk, and set it up if you want. Once it's been set up, try fdisk /mbr once again - IT MUST BE A CLEAN, WRITE PROTECTED FLOPPY!

 

[razled]

thanks will do , I have just got 3 disk from norton which should have done the trick, can of of a rescue &quot;disk&quot; which also scans memmory unfortunalty disk 3 dosnt work so will have to wait untill tommorow to try again.
Thanks for all the advice, I will try this one.
But the way its looking its looking like a new or second hand hard drive ( if the cost is cnot going to be to dear !!!)
thanks again