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Made Newb mistake and it cost me my HD?

B

bikebum

Junior Member
Being the computer amature that I am, I was faced with the following resulting in what I assume was now a virus either deleting my HD or just making my computer not recognize it.

The other day I noticed that my IE homepage had changed to some strange search engine I had never seen before. I didn't pay much attention and just reset the homepage to my normal one and went on my way for the day. This morning I booted up my computer and the strange IE homepage was there again. Well, being the fool I am, I just thought this was some funny IE thing and decided to delete the name of the page everywhere on my computer through using file search. Found the name in a couple locations, internet temp files and windows. Hightlighted and clicked delete, computer froze for a second, then I got a blank desktop (no icons etc). So I staired for a min or two and then tried refresh, ctr-alt-del, alt-f4, and no response. Hmm, bad thoughts come to my head and I hit restart. Bios goes through its thing but does not recognize my HD so windows boots up it's little "want to install windows" program. I stopped that and went into bios and it does not recognize my HD anymore.

Needless to say, I assume I ran into a virus that didn't like my trying to delete it. I am running WinXP Home and the drive that is gone, was a WD 60g HD. I had recently updated windows, etc. Checked and installed updated drivers in January, etc etc.

So how do I find my HD again?

I wish I could tell you what the name of the file was, but of course I didn't write it down. I beleive it was something like msdf.??? I checked the virus websites to see if I could recognize any of the top 20 or so viruses' names but none rung a bell.

Any suggestions? Personally, I would like to retreive the data (duh), but have no real attachment to anything on my HD and have no problem reinstalling everything if that is the way to go. Unfortunately I cannot even do that atm as my system doesn't think it has a HD.
 
I think you might just have a strange coincidence going on. I don't see any cause/effect of this where your hard drive is concerned.

When you go into the bios, can you just set the HD detection for Auto?

Are you comfortable going inside your case to make sure the cables (both the wide ribbon cable and the power connector cable) are attached snugly? The ribbon cable must be checked both on the hard drive end and the motherboard end. Just make sure they are seated correctly on each end.

Assuming you can get the drive to be detected in the bios, try going back into Windows. Use System Restore to go back in time to BEFORE you noticed the homepage being changed. Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore.
 
Okay, I wasn't clear that when I went into bios, I did do HD autodetect and it returns the result of NONE. I have checked my connections and they are secure.

I also recall that one of the files I was going to delete was a dll. However, I just cut that file and was going to move it so if I got a dll error i could replace it. Unfortunately that is when my computer crashed.

And you don't think this is a virus? After reading through virus websites, it seems that if you are infected they want you to disble the processes before attempting to remove them. I of course did not do this and do not know what happens if you do not stop processes like explorer, the specific dll, etc before trying to delete a suspected virus.

But like i said above, I really had no clue before I tried to delete/ cut the files... obviously part of my downfall.
 
Figured out the name of the file and homepage i keep getting... mshp.dll and res://mshp.dll/index.html#10213

I did a search on microsoft for that dll and could not find it....

Is this a coincidence: My printer is an HP... could this be the driver for my printer? I have been getting errors with it recently.

But does that explain why my homepage can NEvER be changed from the above site?

edit: update- I was able to boot the computer and it autodetected my hd this time. I am going to attempt some anti-virus on my computer...... I am still very weary that this is a persistant problem, that may not be virus related?
 
Panda anti-virus says no viruses. Microsoft online virus tool says not infected.

Now my question remains: Where is this mshp.dll coming from? I cannot remove it from my homepage.
 
Try here

Sounds like spyware or addware


Kwatt

ADDED: Try Spyware Blaster and Ad-Aware. Then try CWShredder and SpyBot S&D. Before editing your registry. You can GOOGLE for them.
 
Yeah, be careful not to click "Yes" on any popups offering you stuff (Gator, PrecisionTime, WeatherBug, free smilies for your email, etc).

:Q ~ it's a trap!!
 
Okay, I went through the procedure provided by Kwatt. Unfortunately upon my next reboot, the msdh.dll had returned. So... I went and installed spybotS&D. It found all the registry entries, deleted them, etc etc, reboot, spybot does its thing on startup, etc etc, and everything is running as normal. The other night I shut down, return this morning and guess what? mshp.dll is back!

Since I "cleaned" the system of this, I have had spybot AND spywareblaster running and I still got this problem back. Is there something about this Trojan / spyware that I cannot get around? I cannot seem to find any additional procedures other than just repeats of the procedure provided in Kwatt's link. Any suggestions are appreciated.

On the same note, alm4rr recommended to not use IE, so what do I use instead? Are they not all targets to the same spyware?
 
Sounds like you're getting highjacked and Adaware and Spybot are usually not enough just by themselves. Get a copy of CWShredder and give that a shot. It's a freeware download, tho I don't have the link on hand right now.
 
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