Windows Directory is Empty - Is This a New Virus?

[FastEddieC]

Over the last week or so I have had 2 PCs come in for repair that would not boot.  It turns out that on both,  the entire contents of the Windows directory had been deleted. (looking at the drive with Linux)  I searched the drive, thinking that it just got dragged to another folder, but nope - it's gone.  I ran an undelete program, but it did not find anything from the Windows directory to recover.  The first PC had a few other quirks when I tried work with it so I figured it was a bad drive.   But when a second PC came in with the exact same problem I started to think it might be a virus. 
 
I looked at Symantec's Threat Explorer but didn't see anything that was high on the "Severity" since Dec.
 
Anybody else have this experience?
 
 
Thanks,

Eddie

 

[goombawaho]

Look at some of the earlier threads in this area and you'll find a matching description, though who can guarantee it's the exact same malware.

Are we talking HIDDEN files by file attribute or actually gone, gone, gone.

 

[edfair]

Or moved elsewhere?

You may wish to download unhide.exe, it has been known to help.

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