Is there such thing as Boot sector Virus & how do I remove it ?

Hi,

Lately I have been downloading a lot of stuff & have caught some viruses.

I am going to Format my hard drive anyway but my concern from reading somewhere is that there might be some viruses left in boot sectors even after I format.

(1) Is my concern legitimate & is there such thing as boot sector virus ?

(2) If there is, then how do I find out after formatting ?

(3) And lastly how do I remove it ?

I have NOD32 Antivirus and Spyware doctor as well as Ad aware SE Pro Antispyware & Adware,

All comments will be highly appreciated.

Thanks
Shawn

 

Hi shaun2244, welcome to Wilders.

NOD32 is quite capable of detecting boot sector viruses.

1. Yes, there are such things as boot sector viruses
2. NOD32 should easily be able to detect boot sector viruses, for example if you were to run an on-demand scan that included checking boot sectors, like is included in this scan setup post #47 onwards.
3. The best thing to do since you are planning to format and re-install anyway is to delete the partition first and then create a new before you format, booting from either from a known good boot disk or say a Windows XP product install CD during the initial setup for install.

Some people will recommend doing a disk wipe or low level format which if you wish you could of course do, but this should not be necessary after deleting and creating a new partition.
HTH

Cheers

 

Ah, the heady days of boot sector viruses, windows 3.1 (and 95) and having to run sophos or mcafee from a bootable floppy disk (yes, those floppy disk things, remember them?) to clean the infection.

Happy days!


Now, its all spyware, rootkits and sasser-type viruses. They've taken the fun out of being in IT support

 

it's been so long, I'm beginning to forget about those "fun" days...