Weird windows problem
 

Hey,

Another friend of mine is having comp troubles, and this one is a bit confusing too. He's got winME on there (yes, i know, winME). A week ago he got a virus, norton quarinitined and deleted the files and then he booted up his comp a while laterand he got a windows protection error which forced him to shuit down, he couldnt only get on via safemode which naturally did not allow him to work well. Norton said the virus was milacious, and thats about it. So he formated the HD once, reinstalled me and rebooted, same problem. Did it again, same problem, did it once more and this time it worked. He installed things like word and norton w/ reboots and all was fine. He later ran live update and some other thiongs, rebooted, and now has the problem again! Could this be a bootsector virus? I would say software conflict becuase of norton's gayness BUT i dont know if the reboot the gave himt he error was the first after he ran liveupdate, he couldnt remeber. Also, he used the term 'setting windows to 0' which i assume just means formatting, but i could be wrong. What should he do?

Thanks.

Try this
boot off low level format disk
turn off computer after format
turn back on in a minute
install os
install norton first before anything
virus scan and see if you still have the problem

Look at the forum list.
See the one that includes the words Tech Support?

Jesus, how hard can it be...

:rolleyes:

if you have a LAN it could be a network borne virus on another computer...

Its not on a LAN, and ill try the nortont hing when i get a chance. I wonder what was the deal with the 3 formats?

It could be ALIENS TOO!!!!!1

could be a bios virus, could be that the cd with the os is infected, OR it could be the virus scanner who is infected. could be noumerous reasons

These are all legit copies of the OS's. How would i clean our a bios virus, or did you mean mbr?

im not aware of any 'wild' virii that infect the bios (i could be wrong) , some do try to corrupt it.

its likely windows files have been corrupted/damaged or infected again.

try re-installing winME, that should fix any corrupting/damaged issues

if it reappears then, its virus.

the hd has beenr eformated like 100000 but the problem keeps coming back, what else could i do to eradicate it?

Information and actions required to get any further:

a) If the friend can remember, the name of the file(s) concerned.

b) The name of the virus. If the problem keeps reoccuring, then you presumably still have the virus. Scan for it, or allow it to be picked up, and give us the name and as much of a description as possible. Norton has a basic description of each virus it knows in a database - for more detailed information SARC is the place to go.

c) Drive info. Is there more than one physical drive? If so, disconnect the one that's not required to eliminate it as the source (or implicate it, as the case may be). Is there more than one partition on the master drive? If possible format them too.

d) Format method. Do NOT attempt to format in any 'fancy' way. The best way to do it is to get a WinME rescue disk (from another computer for christsake). WinME is the only version of windows which actually produces a useful rescue disk - it contains all the files you need to get a machine up and running - or to destroy a setup as the case may be. To create one, go to Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel and choose the Startup Disk tab.
Boot off the disk and DO NOT select any of the menu options. Read the bottom of the menu screen. It should say something like "Command prompt only: Shift + F5". Whatever the combination is, do it.
Run fdisk (type fdisk at the prompt) and remove all the partitions on the disk (assuming there's nothing on them your mate needs to keep desperately). Exit fdisk and perform a hard reset (either the reset button or power off then on again). Boot off the disk in the same manner as before. Recreate the partition(s) in fdisk. Exit fdisk. Hard reset and boot off the disk again.
Type "format c: /u" at the prompt without the quotes - that will perform an unconditional format - ie. no recovery info is saved.

If you STILL get it after that you are looking at infected installation media or infected additional media (drivers disks, whatever programs you might install, etc), or some kind of BIOS/CMOS resident virus which, I have to admit, I have never heard of in my life. The only way to get a virus into the BIOS/CMOS would be to flash in a modified version of the BIOS itself which is theoretically possible but highly unlikely, and would probably fail if it was attempted while in windows.
Other than that, it's could be down to simple co-incidence - something bit of hardware may just have fked up on him right after he got the virus. As far as I know a "windows protection error" is just ME saying "oh **** something's gone very wrong somewhere and I don't have a clue what it is".

If you follow the format method above, you eliminate anything present on the harddisk - in the logical drive or in the partition table or in the MBR or whatever. If it's still happening, you're either installing the virus when you reinstall the system, the virus is still resident somehow, or it's not a virus and something's just fked up.

:)

megla is too good.

Heh, yep, thanks megla! Ill give it a try