Boot sector virus xp

Sacred_git

Hi Guys, wondering if you can help me. My brother managed to download a virus and totally bugger the pc. When i try and reinstall XP after it loads the setup files the dreaded dark blue screen appears stating there may be a virus or a hardware issue and aborts

However, i can install vista and did so, then tried to install xp but the same dark blue scr5een appears, which indicates to me the boot sector is still infected etc

Anybody know any way around this, i need XP for work.

Any help appreciated

cheers

Fysh

Try and make a note of the stop code you get when the system crashes, it would help to identify the root cause of the problem.

Try booting from your Vista install media, going into the Repair Your Computer option, then going into the Command Prompt and running "bootrec /FixMbr".

However, from the sound of it the MBR wasn't being correctly wiped when you installed Vista then try to install XP.

At that point, my advice would be to download GParted, burn it to a CD, boot from that CD, open a terminal, and run

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

(Tip stolen shamelessly from here).

That should do the trick. If it doesn't, check whether there are any other bootable devices connected to the system, disconnect them, and try again. If you're still having problems, look up the manufacturer of your motherboard and find out how to reset the BIOS back to factory settings. (Make a note of any settings you've tinkered with before resetting the BIOS, just to make sure you're not adding further problems).

Sacred_git

wow thanks for the info, how the world of viruses has changed or is it just me, seems a bit hardcore one, anyway, ill give this a bash!!

Fysh wrote: »

Try and make a note of the stop code you get when the system crashes, it would help to identify the root cause of the problem.

Try booting from your Vista install media, going into the Repair Your Computer option, then going into the Command Prompt and running "bootrec /FixMbr".

However, from the sound of it the MBR wasn't being correctly wiped when you installed Vista then try to install XP.

At that point, my advice would be to download GParted, burn it to a CD, boot from that CD, open a terminal, and run

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

(Tip stolen shamelessly from here).

That should do the trick. If it doesn't, check whether there are any other bootable devices connected to the system, disconnect them, and try again. If you're still having problems, look up the manufacturer of your motherboard and find out how to reset the BIOS back to factory settings. (Make a note of any settings you've tinkered with before resetting the BIOS, just to make sure you're not adding further problems).

Mycroft H

Fysh wrote: »

Try and make a note of the stop code you get when the system crashes, it would help to identify the root cause of the problem.

Try booting from your Vista install media, going into the Repair Your Computer option, then going into the Command Prompt and running "bootrec /FixMbr".

However, from the sound of it the MBR wasn't being correctly wiped when you installed Vista then try to install XP.

At that point, my advice would be to download GParted, burn it to a CD, boot from that CD, open a terminal, and run

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

(Tip stolen shamelessly from here).

That should do the trick. If it doesn't, check whether there are any other bootable devices connected to the system, disconnect them, and try again. If you're still having problems, look up the manufacturer of your motherboard and find out how to reset the BIOS back to factory settings. (Make a note of any settings you've tinkered with before resetting the BIOS, just to make sure you're not adding further problems).

your going to to need sudo to get dd to run correctly on the gparted live cd.


so......

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

where hda is your hard drive, though is usually sda theses days. To find out for sure run

sudo fdisk -l

and look for your hard drive identifier, its usually sda these days as most hard drives are SATA ones. hda referrs to the ancient IDE type drives. :pac:

Fysh

The gparted terminal launches as root so AFAIK you dont need to use sudo. At least, I've not needed to when using it to shred old drives prior to disposal...

Capt'n Midnight

Fysh wrote: »

At that point, my advice would be to download GParted, burn it to a CD, boot from that CD, open a terminal, and run

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

Ouch
that will kill off the partition table too , so you loose everything :eek:


To save just the partition table to a file called mbr.bak
dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bak bs=1 count=64 skip=446 seek=446

gpart  may  be  of  some  help when the primary partition table was lost or destroyed but it can under no circumstances replace proper disk/partition table backups.  To save the master boot record (MBR) including the primary partition table to a file type

              dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bak bs=512 count=1

To restore the primary partition table without overwriting the MBR type

              dd if=mbr.bak of=/dev/hda bs=1 count=64 skip=446 seek=446

If you have SATA drives then XP will most likely BSOD out if you haven't loaded a SATA driver - it's a software thing - Press F6 and insert the driver when first booting the install CD

Fysh

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Ouch
that will kill off the partition table too , so you loose everything :eek:

A fair point - given the OP's mention of a failed attempt at reinstalling XP followed by installing Vista followed by another failed attempt at reinstalling XP, I had assumed that data backups had either already happened or had been forsaken in an effort to get the system back up and running.

Capt'n Midnight

Fysh wrote: »

I had assumed that data backups had either already happened or had been forsaken in an effort to get the system back up and running.

I assumed that it was reinstalled over the top