FAT corruption

SWScorch

Diamond Member
May 13, 2001
9,520
1
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Bleargh!

Last night, I was playing Warcraft 3, and when I finished, I tried to play some mp3s, but Winamp kept skipping and skipping to the next song, like it does when it cant find the files. So I open up Winders Explorer, and my ewntire D: drive is corrupted! All the folder and file names are written in psuedo "1337-speak," with alternating capital and lowercase letters, and lots of hidden characters and tildes. I ran Norton Disk Doctor, and it tried to revive and rebuild the partition, but no avail. Norton AV detected nothing, so I'm hoping this is just a particularly gruesome random FAT crash.

However, I discussed this with my boss today, and he warned me of impending RIAA viruses embedded in mp3 files that are distributed through P2P networks. I had just downloaded a few mp3s prior to this, but they were fairly obscure, and I really doubt that the RIAA has started doing this yet. So for the moment that thought is merely in the back of my mind; I am not giving it any serious consideration.

Does anyone know if FAT systems get corrupted like this with such abruptness? It literally was fine just 20 minutes before.... I have the majority of my mp3s backed up, but alas, I also had personal images, music videos, babe pics and "necessary stuff" (like drivers) on the disk... ANy tips on how to get them back? Norton DD will no longer run, saying that another disk utility is already working or something to that effect.
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
27,139
16,035
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Did you happen to run a virus scan ? Were you using a virus protection program at the time ? You can wipe out an entire disk in nano-seconds, or screw up a File Allocation Table in a second with a good virus. Do you have backups ? My first virus taught me, backup, or take the consequences. I am not saying that is what it was, just pointing out a good possibility. If it wasn't a virus, then your hard disk could be on its way out, and you would have needed a good backup anyway.
 

SWScorch

Diamond Member
May 13, 2001
9,520
1
76
I have Norton AV, completely updated, running full-time auto protect, and ran a full system-wide scan immediately after discovering this and it found nothing.
 

Sukhoi

Elite Member
Dec 5, 1999
15,346
106
106
However, I discussed this with my boss today, and he warned me of impending RIAA viruses embedded in mp3 files that are distributed through P2P networks. I had just downloaded a few mp3s prior to this, but they were fairly obscure, and I really doubt that the RIAA has started doing this yet. So for the moment that thought is merely in the back of my mind; I am not giving it any serious consideration.

I kinda doubt the RIAA would do that as it is highly illegal and it wouldn't be very good for all their lawsuits if it was found out they were distributing viruses. :)
 

RaySun2Be

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
16,565
6
71
I kinda doubt the RIAA would do that as it is highly illegal and it wouldn't be very good for all their lawsuits if it was found out they were distributing viruses.

Ah, but there's the rub. There is a bill in Congress that will give them "safe harbor" and allow them to use hacking techniques, even those considered illegal, in order to pursue copyright violators. :|

So they could run virus' to corrupt illegal mp3s. I doubt they would be doing it yet, though.

What OS? Windows98 or ME? I think the Win98 FDISK has an option to repair FAT tables. You would need a bootable floppy with FDISK on it to run.
 

DeschutesCore

Senior member
Jul 20, 2002
360
0
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Slightly OT.

There are already several of the RIAA'd songs online. The songs are interspersed with "If you enjoy this selection, please purchase" and long pauses.

I doubt they'd do the virus thing. Too many companies would be damaged in the process. Home users would have no recourse if they did, but several corporations getting together could do something about it.

DC.
 

Sukhoi

Elite Member
Dec 5, 1999
15,346
106
106
Damn RIAA. There's a reason I've never bought a CD and won't consider doing so for a long time. :|
 

Derango

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2002
3,113
1
0
FAT is a terrible filesystem. Its pretty unstable, and a corruption like this is entirely possible. Microsoft should have abandoned FAT when they moved to windows 95-98. (or whenever they first came up with NTFS, a much better system).

Say...you were using windows 2000 right? *hits Scorch over the head with a board* You should have been using NTFS.
 

SWScorch

Diamond Member
May 13, 2001
9,520
1
76
No, Derango, I uninstalled Win2K a long time ago because it caused too many problems... I do have Win XP Pro sitting right here next to me though, and I'm considering loading that....
 

SWScorch

Diamond Member
May 13, 2001
9,520
1
76
Oh, and now it seems, after I've formatted this drive and reloaded what few mp3s I had backed up, that it reset itself to 640x480 and 16 colors, and I cant change it. I reinstalled the latest Detonators and the monitor drivers, but to no avail. Damn thee, Mercury (thats my computer's name) Damn thee to hell!

I'm going to install WindowsXP
 

The Wildcard

Platinum Member
Oct 31, 1999
2,743
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I was just about to post a thread about this problem until I ran into yours. For some strange reason, my backup hdd, a WD 20 gig suddenly was corrupted too. I usually don't leave it connected to my computer, but yesterday I needed to pull some files from it, so I hooked it up to my computer and booted up.

The bios detected it, and the stupid WD Diagonistic utilities reported no problems with the drive(I used the utlities after I discovered there was a problem) but when I tried accessing it in Windows 2000, it kept telling me that the backup drive was not properly formatted.

So then I use a systems disk and access the backup drive as a master and find out that the FAT is totally corrupted. I used scandisk and managed to salvage some personal files (god bless scandisk) but I can't figure out what the problem is.

***Don't rely on Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools Diagaonistic Programs cuz they don't test worth crap*****

Like you, I had norton running in the background with auto protect and it didn't detect anything. I also did a full complete system scan of my system (maybe something from my system was infecting the backup drive) and it came up empty. I am also using the latest updates.

I am still suspecting a virus because I have several floppies that have mysteriously died on me and i am suspecting a BOOT VIRUS of some sorts....but I dunno why Norton can't detect it. So that still puzzles me. I am planning to scan those floppies later tonight.

In any case, I began backing up alot of my data, lol.

 

RaySun2Be

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
16,565
6
71
Some of the newer virus try to disable or remove norton. If you can get to a clean PC, and create a Norton emergency disk, boot to that disk and scan the suspect PC.

Also try using an online scan like McAfee, or yu can download another anti-virus program and scan with that. I helped a friend of a friend yesterday who got infected with Klez and I-worm, but couldn't get Norton to run. So I had him download and install AVG Anti-virus, which found about 15 infected files. It cleaned what it could and removed the others.

I then had him download FixKlez.exe from the Symantec site to doublecheck for Klez and fix the registry.
 

MoFunk

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2000
4,058
0
0
Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
Some of the newer virus try to disable or remove norton. If you can get to a clean PC, and create a Norton emergency disk, boot to that disk and scan the suspect PC.

Also try using an online scan like McAfee, or yu can download another anti-virus program and scan with that. I helped a friend of a friend yesterday who got infected with Klez and I-worm, but couldn't get Norton to run. So I had him download and install AVG Anti-virus, which found about 15 infected files. It cleaned what it could and removed the others.

I then had him download FixKlez.exe from the Symantec site to doublecheck for Klez and fix the registry.

Try the AVG thing like Ray says. A lady at work had the latest updates in her McAfee and got a virus! She tried to install Norton and it would not load. She was able to load AVG and cleaned up those little buggers, all 15 of them!!!!!!! You can go to www.grisoft.com and download it free. If it still does not work there are a few online scanners that you can use for free but dont know how well they work.

If it is not a virus, try and change out your IDE cable for a new one. I was having floppy issues with WinXP and it turned out to be the cable. May be worth trying.