Boot Sector Virus or HD dead?

Hey Guys,

I was wonder if you might know wuts wrong with my hard drive. Umm, when i boot it up it freezes at the beginning where norton tries to do a boot scan, and the hard drive goes no where after that. I've tried to format the drive, but when i stick in a startup disk it won't go to dos either. Could this be a boot sector virus? I think i've also scanned the HD with f-prot for dos, and found nothing. Do you think its a virus or is my HD dead? What other suggestions do u think you might have that i could try.

btw i'm running win98se...

YODA

 

YODA

Have you tryed to boot in SAFE MODE

snowman

 

Have you tried to change the startup order in your BIOS?
It might still go to C: first.
When you get to DOS this way you may want to try the command fdisk /mbr first. Since you seem to have given up on the data on your HD already, this will do no more harm and might help.

Regards,

Pieter

 

Yoda

don't know if this will work on your os..but you can try.


1) Restart your computer using your emergency start-up disk.

2) use the arrow key on your keyboard to select: "Start computer without cd-rom support" An then press "enter"

3) at the prompt type scanreg/fix and then press "enter"


goodluck

snowman

 

YAY! i fixed it....

-Ok this was my problem, my HD would stop once it got to it said :

Starting Windows 98....
Loading NAVDX, please wait (then HD stops)

-Ok... so i try safemode...

Windows is bypassing your startup files (then HD stops)

-Now i try to use a Windows 98 Startup Disk and got this:

Microsoft RAMDrive Version 3.06 virtual Drive F:
Disk Size:2,048k
Sector Size:512bytes
Allocation unit:2 sectors
Directory entries: 64 (then HD would stop)

-It wouldn't even go to where it says "A:"

-I couldn't even format the HD cause it wouldn't even go to the A drive promp... so now i tried to do something else, i went to comand prompt, and it could only located my C drive, lucky i had Ghost installed. So i did a Gdisk and erase the whole disk and partitions, and it got rid of everything. Now everything works fine..... I wonder what was wrong. Do you guys think it was a boot sector virus. Lots of times i find warnings from my AV, after scanning a file it states that the boot records have been changed. Are those boot sector viruses?

btw i scanned my computer with f-prot for dos and found nothing

YODA

 

YODA

Well isn't that great!! Wonderful job and well done.

Yoda I am considering dropping off the internet again...if I do...you take good care........wishing you well.


snowman

 

Snowman,

You take care man....we will miss ya at wilders.

BestWishes,
Yoda

 

Hi YOD@!

Glad that you found an answer. I'm sure you'll find answers to your other questions too!

To snowman:
It's okay snowman if you need to rest. Or is the hardware malfunctioning again? In any event we'll be here when you get back. Thank you for making the effort to be here again. It's been a real treat!

Best regards to all from Larry!

 

No,,, the boot sector has nothing to do with your A: drive unless the boot sector of the A: drive was infected also.
It was mentioned to look at your BIOS.
If your BIOS was set to look at the A: drive first, you should have been able to boot to the floppy. That is for sure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, if you had a memory resident virus, doing an restore from image would not have fixed a thing.
Booting with Ghost uses a different version of DOS if I remember right
Something sounds fishy to say the least

 

Hi controler,

Ya my bios was configured to start on A drive, then CD drive, then Hard Drive. There was nothing wrong with the floppy or ne other hardware, or even the connections to the hardware.. everything was setup right and in workin condition. I didn't do a restore image, or booting of ghost. I used the command prompt by pressing f8 at boot up, and used the Ghost that was already installed on my hard drive. In ghost, there is a program called Gdisk, that is use to wipe disk. I was able to use gdisk in the command promp, and it wiped out all data and partitions that were on the drive. After that i recreated partitions, format, and reinstalled windows and everything seem to startup fine. But i would like to figure out wut it could of been. Do you guys know would do such a thing?

YODA