Just upgraded to XP pro and odd problem occured

boogie man · 13-01-2003 11:07AM #1

Hi all,
I was running win98se and it was working fine. I got my hands on a copy of XP pro and decided to upgrade. The installation went fine. However, when I'd put a CD into the cd-rom drive I would get an Autorun.exe error - procedure entry point not found in kernel32.dll. The kernel32.dll sometimes is replaced with other .dll files. Also, when trying to start a game or install applications similar errors would come up.
After finding nothing conclusive on the net about it I decided to move any needed files to my other hard drive and do a clean install of XP pro. So I reverted back to the old 98se and proceeded with the clean install. Turns out it wasn't as clean as I would have liked it - my old files were still intact and the same problems were happening.
At this stage I cut my losses, said F**K it and I reformatted the c drive and did a super clean install of 98se again. Now guess what? The same problem is happening in 98!!!
This is starting to sound like a virus to me. Dose anyone have any ideas about my problem?

Thanks,
B.M.

Stark · 13-01-2003 11:30AM

A decent virus scanner should show if it's a virus. There are free ones available on the web.
It doesn't sound like a virus to me, but if it were a virus remaining after a re-install then it's likely in the MBR (running fdisk /MBR should clear it).

boogie man · 13-01-2003 12:02PM

Forgive my ignorance! what's MBR?
On the off chance it is a virus, is it possible that it could be on my second hard disk and it's getting transmitted back onto the primary HD after it's been re-formatted?

leeroybrown · 13-01-2003 01:58PM

The MBR is the Master Boot Record of your Hard Disk. It stores information necessary to make your OS bootable.

Running fdisk /MBR would cleart any junk out of it but would also stop XP booting.

Best to use the Recovery Console on the XP CD (I don't use XP but I presume theres one) and use the "fixmbr" option.

The_Conductor · 13-01-2003 02:27PM

If you're reformatting your hard-drive in order to reinstall the operating system use the default partioning tools that come with MS operating systems (yes I know there are far better available- before anyone starts to flame me, but at least you'll have these free.....)
Remove the currently existing partitions on the hard-drive and then repartition. This should clear up any junk that has accumulated on your master boot record.

BTW- XP will install quite happily on a FAT32 partition (which you inheritted from Windows 98SE) but you would be better reformatting in the default partition (NTFS) its more stable and more secure (allegedly......)

boogie man · 14-01-2003 09:09AM

Thanks for your help guys,

I got my hands on a good version of W2K pro and sucessfully installed it onto my freshly repartitioned/reformatted hard drive. Now I just need a few drivers and all should be well!

B.M.

Stark · 17-01-2003 11:32AM

Running fdisk /MBR would cleart any junk out of it but would also stop XP booting

No it wouldn't. XP stores its boot loader in the boot sector of its own partition as opposed to the master boot record (which linux normally does).

Just upgraded to XP pro and odd problem occured

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