My hard drive will not boot! Please, please HELP!!

[86plymouthcolt]

When I turned on my computer I get the message that scandisk will run to check integrity of my drive. I let it run and its says it needs to delete some corrupted files. Then it just keeps going nonstop deleting files.

It seems my boot block is trashed. Any advice on how I can restore it temporarily to salvage whatever data is remaining?

I am running XP Pro.

 

[mechBgon]

My first suggestion is to set up another PC for no-holds-barred antivirus scanning, with the latest virus definitions, disconnect it from the network cable as an additional precaution, put your injured hard drive into it as a slave, and do an antivirus scan of the affected drive. Once that's done, copy the important files to the healthy computer's hard drive for safekeeping, have the healthy computer do a ScanDisk on the drive, then put the drive back in its own computer and reinstall Windows on it.

After reinstalling Windows on it, you can either move the data back on DVDs or CDs, or across the network, or again put the hard drive in the "holding-tank" computer and move the files back.

 

[mechBgon]

By the way, remember that with the Sasser worms, your computer is immediately vulnerable to worm attack from the Internet, if it's connected straight to your cable/DSL modem without a router/firewall inbetween when the NIC driver gets installed (some modems may have such features but many don't). So don't plug your Ethernet cable in until you've got either a hardware or software firewall.

Maybe download ZoneAlarm's basic firewall software from here and have that ready on a CD so you can get your shields up before connecting the computer to the cable/DSL modem (assuming you have broadband but no router/firewall, that is). And naturally, make sure to hit Windows Update promptly and go back several times to get the whole load of updates.

 

[Regs]

Could also use a Win XP pro disc to repair the boot config files. If that's that the problem. Press Del on boot to enter bios. Goto boot and select CD-ROM as first boot device. Pop in the win xp cd and restart. Have it do a repair.

But Mech, would the sasser worm destroy the boot set up? Or any other ones for that matter? It must be extremely rare.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Regs
Could also use a Win XP pro disc to repair the boot config files. If that's that the problem. Press Del on boot to enter bios. Goto boot and select CD-ROM as first boot device. Pop in the win xp cd and restart. Have it do a repair.

But Mech, would the sasser worm destroy the boot set up? Or any other ones for that matter? It must be extremely rare.

If the fresh, unpatched, unprotected system is plugged directly into a non-firewalled broadband Internet connection, then it's certainly a distinct possibility.

 

[86plymouthcolt]

Thank you mechBgon and Regs.

I don't believe it is a virus or worm--at the time I was resizing the C: drive with PartitionMagic. I think I did something very very wrong.

 

[Cheetah8799]

-at the time I was resizing the C: drive with PartitionMagic. I think I did something very very wrong.

that doesn't sound good...

I suggest you plug the hard drive into a known working system so that you can salvage data and then re-format and re-install windows.

 

[86plymouthcolt]

I was able to repair the drive, but I lost 80% of my data. I feel real bad because it was baby pictures which I can never recreate.

After a successful reboot I ran a scan with Norton antivirus. This is what I found:

Trojan.ByteVerify--I had two: verifierBug.class and counter.class

What a crappy 24 hours.