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How do I Nuke The win98 OS safely?

T

Tripleshot

Elite Member
I need to upgrade the OS. The Current OS is hoded from a virus.(KAK.HTM) I am trying to load Win98SE in place of ther corruputed OS. Problem. During the install, The new OS detects" that another 98 is already installed. You Must use an Upgrade disk. This disc is for new installs only Remove anything in cd or floopy and re boot."

Ok, I am in Dos. What files do I need to del to get a new OS to install? I need to recover all the customers apps and emailEtc, And I want the OS up so I can ghost and reformat the existing HDD. I would then return the image to the newly formated HDD.

Does that make sense?

I figured if I nuke the files the OS looks for on install, then I can install this new 98SE OS.

Please help me if you have done this before. This puter has been on my bench too long.🙁
 
You are saying that you wanna loose the existing win98 install?
you are also saying you already have ghost image you are gonna recover with.
so what you are saying in summary is you have nothing you wanna keep from the previous win98 install.
as far as he emails there is a faq I think. re which file you wanna save to disk.
if you have all the software (install cds) for all the apps on your machine it is easy
from a dos promt type in ( deltree windows ) from a c: promp that should erase you entire windows diredtory and will take some time to accomplish. your email will however be gone.. all data from programs will still be there as it is in the programs folder
The ghost thing i could never find the time to figure out. so you are on your own. I believe it yo restore a ghost image you will erase the entire contents of the drive.

 
I haven't run Ghost yet. I need to get the system stable to boot up first. I was thinking that. The customer got the KAK virus in sept. Hadn't check the mail since. Now there is 1158 Emails,and two of them where loaded with Virus's thatNirton caught. The system crashed from a corrupted file and wante to re install the OS. I didn't want to go with generic 98, I thought I would instal 98SE. When I put a 98SE disc in to setup, It refuses because it already has the 98 OS installed. It wants to run an upgrade disc. I do not want an Upgrade. I want the real mcCoy legal copy I have sitting here to sell the customer. Or for that matter I can sell her XP home. But as long as it has that 98 OS, 98SE will not load. I have some driver issues I think 98SE could help out on.

When it gets up to the point of typing in the CDkey, The 98SE has already determined that 98 exists and refuses to load any further.

I am going top ghost the image then nuke the hard drive in hopes of speeding things up. The registry is all fouled up and kids have put on spy ware and all sorts of junk. Yesterday,it lost explorer. With out explorer,Windows is DOA.

I may move the email to another folder and then nuke the OS. There is nothing elese personal stored in the Windows folder?
 
From a DOS prompt work your way down to the Windows folder and rename win.com to win.moc or whatever you want. That will prevent the installation CD from detecting the existing Windows. Run the install. This USUALLY works, but not always.
 
In windows directory there is favorites, which I would hate to loose. Also the outlook mail folder is in Application Data -> Identities. Also use the address book program to export the address book. I back up My documents folder and any save game folders for games that anyone is currently playing.

And you can't install a full version over another version. It just doesn't have the right loader. But if you want to keep all the other folders in place you can Deltree (deltree c:\windows) the Windows directory (make sure your boot floppy has the deltree command from the Windows/Command directory on it). Be warned it takes awhile to do this.

But if your dealing with an infection that hasn't been deleted or quarantined then fdisk and format is your only road out. (I also turn my machine off when asked for a name after format is done, so memory residents can't rewrite themselves to the hard drive.)

You can also get the installation disk from your manufacturer of your hard drive and use it to reformat. It usually is successful with MBR viruses.
 
(Sorry about the html coding that is listed below. I did a copy/paste from the webpage and I can't seem to edit the html codes out)

Don't rename Windows to something else. I tried that one time and ended up with a registry that was pointing to C:\Windows for some entries and picking up other files from the renamed directory. not a good thing. Renaming win.com to win.xxx (I use my initals for the extension so I can easily find the files I have renamed) may or may not work. I'm really not sure.

If you just want to install Windows cleanly, you can probably try deleting command.com, msdos.sys, and io.sys. This will remove the files that make the C: drive bootable, which may be enough to allow the Windows 98 CD to install. I'm not positive, though. I've seen that error message when trying to reinstall in the past a few times, but I don't remember exactly what I have done to fix it.

If you want to try to clean the virus first, check out the following which was found from this webpage:

<FONT face=Arial>Disclaimer

</FONT><FONT color=#800040>PLEASE: Do not try these steps if you are not comfortable deleting files. I claim no responsibility for you not understanding these steps or following them correctly.</FONT>
Before cleaning, its a good idea to delete the actual emails in your Outlook Express program that have the virus. Otherwise when you preview the message again, the system will reinfect itself.
Once infected, do not reboot or restart your computer before cleaning, otherwise the infection will return.
Delete the following:
1) Delete the added lines in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file
@echo off>C:\Windows\STARTM~1\Programs\StartUp\kak.hta
del C:\Windows\STARTM~1\Programs\StartUp\kak.hta
or delete the autoexec.bat file and rename the AE.KAK file to AUTOEXEC.BAT
2) Delete the KAK.HTA file from the Windows Startup group as well as the c:\windows directory. Also delete the temporary .hta file which was placed in the c:\windows\system directory. This file generally has a name like 74F03760.hta. Although the temporary filename will never be the same, just delete the .hta files in the c:\windows\system directory. You may have to change your Folder Options to "Show All Files" in order to find these files.
3) Using REGEDIT, Delete the 2 added registry entries
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows \Currentversion\Run\cAg0u
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0\signatures\Default Signature
(Be sure the default signature entry points to the KAK file)
4) Download and Install the Microsoft patch for the security vulnerability that allows this worm to invade your system.


<FONT face=Arial>Automatic Removal Program for the KAK Worm
</FONT>This KAK Cleaner program will automatically clean the KAK worm from systems. You can download it from either link below, then double-click on it to clean the KAK worm from your systems.
KAK Cleaner
KAK Cleaner (alternate site)
 
Wow! Great advice folks. Thank you.

The HDD was so screwed up, I decided to pull it, replace it with a new one, install a fresh copy of 98SE with Plus Pak, install fresh office 97,and then reinstall the bad HDD (now as a "D" drive) and copy the pertinate files over. Of course,the program files do not appear anymore,but I told the customer, many of them they do not want anyways.(Gator, WebWatcher, etc...) I found the Wab files and placed the favorites files in the appropriate places. I did not port over the mail (1158 Emails) because I did al this before reading here how to do it. Also I do not want to re-infect this new HDD. I am running Norton 2001 antivirus in the background all the time now on this outfit. It's a good program. It is not nearly as doggy as previous versions, and will auto-update in the background.

I changed out her mobo because it was a Gainward mobo manufactured long ago and I did not want to fuss with searching for a legacy bios to see if I can update her K6 300 to a K6-2 500. It would not accept anty of the newer AGP video cards I had in stock,and refused to let a SB live work on the PCI buss.

enough things were going bad on this system that I conviced the owner a new upgrade was needed. They wanted that anyway. Now the only thing original is a failing CD, a doggy floppy,and a lame power supply in an AT case from hell. But I will only charge $400 for my services. She gets a new mobo,CPU, double the ram, a new nic, a new modem, a used g400 dual head AGP card, and sound blaster live value. With all that, my labor was a bout $1.25/hr.

I hate viruses. And people are so lame they think they are imune because they bought virus protection 3 years ago. It never dawns on them that they need to turn the program on and update the dat files on a regular basis.

Again thank you for the help. I am pasting the advice to a word doc for future reference, although I doubt I'll forget this experience anytime soon.😉
 
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