If you can fix this install problem-YOU ARE THE MAN!!! HELP!!!!

[gplracer]

Here I am again......

My friend was having major windows problems so we decided to reinstall windows. He had several partitions on his drive so I deleted them with fdisk. I had to do this because win98 SE would not start up. I got the SU00013 error. I deleted the partitions. I then made one large partition. I went through the install process with no problems. When windows asked me to restart the computer it happened!!!! It said invalid system disk. It would not continue the windows installation. I went to fdisk again and it seemes that everytime I go there I get a different reading. I had to partition the drive again because it said there was no partition. Now it says 195600 mbytes on the drive, system unknown, usage is just %. Down below it says the drive is only has 7560 mbytes available. WTF? I made one partition and earlier it said 195600 free? Now it says this. I have gone through this whole process three times and got the same results. This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen. What do you guys think?

 

[Dill]

try re-partitioning it. then format it and install windows.

don't forget to set the partition active in fdisk, or it won't boot from it.

 

[Vinny N]

If fdisk shows different stuff everytime you go in and your partition changes don't seem to be taking effect, then it could be a virus.

In fact, the stoned.empire monkey virus does exactly this.

Some rescue disks from Norton will clean it up, or possibly a low level format/0-fill utility. Though I don't guarantee the later option working.(tried it before...)

 

[Lalakai]

yep, go with the low level format; it takes awhile for a large disk.

you can also try "format /u" for a universal format that disregards all other commands (be careful to do this from the "a:" prompt and aim it at the c-drive). also make certain you have all the necessary drivers on your boot disk, to load up your cd-rom drivers, ect.

good luck

 

[DaLeroy]

Yup, sounds VERY much like a virus. Low-level format seems the way to go...

 

[Howard]

PUGsly,

FDISKing formats automatically.

 

[subhuman]

FDISKing definitely doesn't format automatically, what are you smoking? Can I have some?

 

[gplracer]

We just deleted the partition on the drive and re partitioned it into one partition. It showed on 20 gig partition again. We then rebooted and started the format. It starts to format 7 gigs of space. Why does it does this happen? I went into fdisk and now it says there is a primary dos parttition and an extened dos partition. The available space is somewhere around 7 gigs. What is going on?

 

[gplracer]

Here is an even worse problem. When windows finishes installing all the necessary files, it asks to reboot. Whenever we do that, the computer is unable to find the windows files to restart. It says something about no system disk found or something. I check the cms and the c drive is in line to boot. I installed all the files to the c drive too. What would cause the computer to not be able to continue the install of windows because it can not find the necessary files?

 

[Dameon]

Yep.... zero the fargin drive. Need to 0 that booger out.
What vendor hard drive is it?

 

[StanFL]

Did you consider deleting the master boot record? fdisk/mbr It might be that simple, that the current one is corrupted, fdisk'ing by itself doesn't rewrite the mbr. I know I'd try it before going to the low level format option.

 

[jimmygates]

Go into BIOS and do a low level format. That should kill the sucka.



-Jimbo

 

[Dulanic]

As someone else said do fdisk /mbr.... that will clean up your MBR... some viruses store themselves in your MBR and thats the only way to clean them out. Also make the boot disk on SOMEONE ELSES computer... otherwise when you make the startup disk the virus can infect the disk so the fdisk will just reinfect it.

 

[edblor]

r u sure that the C: drive has been set active in fdisk??

Try that!!

and unless it is a SCSI drive, you can't low level format from BIOS!!! That would require a utility from the HD manufacturer.....

Edblor

 

[Vinny N]

If this really is the stoned empire monkey virus, even a 0 fill or low level format won't guarantee it being cleaned up like I said.

If you can get your hands on a set of Norton rescue disks, I would try that first, otherwise you're in for a world of frustration if you keep trying various 0-fills or LLFs and they still don't clean this up.

 

[Vinny N]

here's an excerpt from the Symantec Norton AV web pages:

http://service1.symantec.com/sarc/sarc.nsf/html/stoned.empire.monk.html

Stoned.Empire.Monkey

Stoned.Empire.Monkey is a virus with no currently known strains that cause intentional permanent damage. However, a Stoned.Empire.Monkey infection is a major inconvenience. If you boot from a floppy disk on an infected computer, the system will not find your hard drive. Carried only on diskettes, Stoned.Empire.Monkey spreads easily to systems without protection. Stoned.Empire.Monkey is a memory resident infector of the master boot record on hard disks and the boot sector on floppy disks. ***When the virus is in memory, it re-routes any boot record access to a copy of the original boot sector.***

***this is why fdisk /mbr or even a LLF utility may not work properly!

Stoned.Empire.Monkey encrypts the partition table (an essential part of the system area), moves the original to a different location on the hard drive, and then takes the place of the real partition table. For the system to read the real partition (and see the drive), Stoned.Empire.Monkey must be active in memory. If you boot from a clean floppy disk, thus avoiding the virus, your system cannot access the hard drive by normal means.

Stoned.Empire.Monkey occupies 1K at the top of memory (640K mark). Any memory indicator shows 1 less K of memory than the computer actually has. To verify that a computer has the virus, the user can run either DOS CHKDSK or MEM. These commands report about 638K to 639K if your system is infected.

Although the Stoned.Empire.Monkey virus is not designed to damage data (in its current incarnations), it blindly writes to any available disk, regardless of format. This undoubtedly causes loss of data and formatting on non-DOS disks.

Although Stoned.Empire.Monkey is common worldwide, it is especially prevalent in Canada, North America, and South America.

Stoned.Empire.Monkey was written in Edmonton, Canada.


-------------

The part in bold is why fdisk reads weird partitions of sizes that you didn't create, and often identifies them as NON-DOS.

It's also why, you may be able to format a drive, and install Windows all in one shot, but upon reboot, it cannot decrypt the data.

 

[gplracer]

thanks guys i will try all of the suggestions tomorrow