Windows 98 Wont Load (Virus Involved)

JohnK

My sisters PC got hit with a virus yesterday thats preventing windows from loading. Norton (2004 Professional with 3 day old defs) didn't detect the virus except only that something had modified the boot sector or file, i'm not sure which. The Norton window that announced this had a restore option that I used after which it launched a full scan. This scan found nothing so I opened the main norton application which informed me that liveupdate had been disabled but that the last update was on March 23rd, about 3 days before infection. I launched it manually and downloaded some updates (nothing major, an update to some redirector) which required a restart (ie, a message box with click OK to restart and only an ok button so no real choice). I clicked ok and the pc started to restart but when booting up turns itself off.

It gets asfar as the windows logo screen saying Loading windows 98 then just powers down. This happens for normal load and safe mode. I can use the command prompt to see that both partitions (C & D) and all the files are there. I have tried a step by step confirmation boot but it powers down when it tries to load the windows graphical user interface. It asks if I want to load it. I say yes, and some weird chars appear on screen then "Press any key to continue", I press a key, it shows the logo screen for a second or two then it powers off.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to fix this? I can hook the drive up to another PC and get her files off then do a reinstall but she has a lot of applications she needs that she does not have the installers for so that would be a last resort.

I'd appreciate any help,

Thanks.

jessy

Create a boot disk (or use the one you should have already created) and boot from that. once you get into win scan boot secter if norton finds nothing try other Antivirus software like bitdefender.