EDIT: IT WAS MAGISTR VIRUS!-Papa Got His Puter Hacked (Win2k Boot Failure- Help!)

[tristramshandy]

Poor guy, the bad Magistr virus wiped-out a ton of his files, infected his win.ini and was imperious to anti-virus scans from the bootable Norton disk. His computer tech tried accessing the scsi harddrive from another rig and promptly found the virus coming over to the auxilliary desk-top. So it was fdisk/format slash'n'burn time. Two and a half weeks of non-backed-up client files down the crapper.

So I'm not worried about any of the guys on this forum, but you should all go tell your Dads: UPDATE YOUR ANTIVIRUS DEFS AND RUN A SYSTEM SCAN!

Thanks to everyone here who responded to the call for help. Cheers! -m


////My poor old dad was accessing court-rulings on the WestLaw internet database, when he suddenly got a Windows message accusing him of being a "blood-sucker" and "hunk of Sh*t." Windows 2000 froze, and, when he tried to reboot, the system hung right after the boot-frame that identifies detected IRQs and ports appeared. Windows would not execute.

He's tried to access his directory systems in DOS with a Win98 boot disk, and though he sees his old directory structures, he cannot see or access any files in them. I don't think that he could have been hit by an excutable that would have erased all the particular files on his system but which left all the directory structure intact. Maybe I'm wrong.

We tried reinstalling Windows 2k over the old installation, in order just to be able to boot to the C: prompt (if nothing else). While the installation went perfectly up to the first reboot (with his scsi harddrives detected and checked as well as his scsi cdroms) the system hangs still right after the IRQ/Ports allocation table -- right before the screen that says Windows is starting. I'm worried for him, because he's tearing out his hair over this. Clearly I don't want to reformat his drive because he's got work that he needs to retrieve.

1. Could this be a boot sector virus or corrupted cmos (don't think the latter)?
2. How can he get a look at what the real file structure remaining on the hard drive is (I might have thought that all had been erased, but then a new install of Win2K still won't take)?
3. Are there any suggestions for getting into windows?

Any and all answers and suggestions get lots of thanks! This is my dad's stuff, and I'm worried about him.

 

[earthman]

Was he logged on with administrator privileges?

 

[Iron Woode]

Put his hdd in another pc and access whatever data you can. Scan for viruses and trojans first. If things are clean then transfer the data and format the old drive and install win2k again.

 

[tristramshandy]

Earthman: Yup, he sure was logged on with administrator privileges by default.

Iron Woode: That's a pretty good idea. I think that will probably happen (Believe it or not, I can't directly do the repair for him because I'm in Dublin Ire, and he's with the computer in Birmingham, AL), but the bother will be having to install his Adaptec scsi card in another computer to get access to the hard drive.

Thank you both.

Are there any other suggestions from the Operating Systems forum folks?

 

[Staver]

If he has bootable CDrom options, I think he can boot the Nortons AV cd or one of the read-only emergency diskettes. It's best to check the system before installing a new O/S since it will probably become infected on execution.