Virus corrupted harddrive , reformatted but can?t install OS?

Socio

Golden Member
May 19, 2002
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My brother said he got a virus from his e-mail, he noticed big slow done on his computer and then it started crashing and finally would not boot even to safe mode.

He shipped me his computer to see what I could do; the first thing I did was I try booting up with Partition Magic boot disk and checked the disk for errors and it found over a half dozen errors. So I decided just to reformat with Partition Magic and re-install his software for him. I reformatted and put Windows XP Home CD in and tried to install the OS mid way through copying the files it gave me a BSOD with a page fault and locked up. I tried hard booting and got an error that it could not load Windows.

I then re-booted with Partition Magic and checked for errors and get : did not mount properly error. This happens every time I try to reformat and re-install the OS it does not matter if I format with Partition Magic or let Windows format during installation via quick or normal.

Now I am not sure if the haddrive is just bad, (it?s only about six months old) or reformatting is not getting rid of the virus he got.

Any suggestions?
 
Jan 31, 2002
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Get the manufacturer's disk utility and do a "write zeroes to drive" to erase all the crap that the virus + PartitionMagic has left behind. Then install off the XP media and create partitions with that.

- M4H
 

Socio

Golden Member
May 19, 2002
1,732
2
81
Thanks for the info!

I got Maxtor powermax utility and ran it, did a deep scan found no errors, passes all tests however when I try to do a low level format it runs for a bit then gets an error and locks up. It is almost like it runs into something it can't delete.

Do you or anyone else know of a more aggressive disk wiping or low level format software that might be able to remove what ever is causing the error?
 

nineball9

Senior member
Aug 10, 2003
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Well, the good news is your brother probably didn't even get an email virus.

The bad news is he has a gonzo hard drive.

Hopefully there is no ugly news because he backed up his system.