-ha- put me in my place by writing
Hi all
My Quantum 20G hdd has been infected in windows by a nice boot sector
virus. Could I erase that sh*t from there, or I have to get rid of my
fave hdd?!
I would appreciate any help;
thanks in advance;
bye;
-ha-
Use a clean boot disk (be sure you change the disk to read only with the
little shutter), then use the fdisk /mbr command. This will kill the MBR
and any boot sector virus that it refers to. Most boot sector virus' are
memory resident, so you will need to shut the machine off for a minute
or so before you boot into DOS.
Using fdisk /mbr you can at least save the data, but you will need to
reinstall windows. This is by far the best alternative. many AV proggies
claim they will remove it, but I have had a 50/50 success rate with
them.
Once you use the fdisk /mbr command, the MBR is totally erased and will
be reconstructed on the next boot up, but Windows will be lost
(probably).
Depending on the virus, you may be able to download a tool to help you
remove it as well. Many are small enough to run right from the floppy.
This is one of the very few ways I know of to kill a boot sector virus
besides a zero write. There was mention that there are actually two
types- a boot sector virus, and an actual MBR virus. I will assume that
you are generalizing. Knowing the virus name would help a bit.
