YOU could help save a life...

[Garnet FalconDance]

....but I doubt it. I am about to inflict serious bodily damage on Agility (and Septfox)! Agility has an older pc upstairs they have been trying to fix so they can play even when mom is 'hogging' the pc in the library. Septfox booted a floppy from this pc, installed on that one, and then discovered they still needed a couple files. Ok, no problem...except when he popped the floppy back into this one, you guessed it--I am now infected with a boot virus that had been lying in wait on the old pc to infect an unsuspecting and innocent computer! So now my A and M drives are both rewritten to f*g DOS making them basically inaccesible!

So why is Agility, who is grounded until almost the end of time already, taking the brunt of the blame? Because he *knew* there was this virus (and others he is 'storing' on his pc) and *oops* forgot to tell anybody of the possibility of infection!!!!!!!!!!! (insert MAJOR bad language) Thinks it and all viruses are just ssoooo funny and clever. (insert more really bad language)

::going off to use creative maritime cursing in private::

Now then, have any of you had a similar problem? It is a stealth boot virus, a memory resident (and like many stds, it is not contagious without the actual sharing of infected parts--so no need to worry about my posts or e-mail) I know the official solution, but since I cannot format a clean disc at this point, that is moot. Have any of you come across another alternative clever solution for cleaning drives of these nasty pesks?

Crap, it's Monday.

A life or two may depend on it............::leaving to plan the demise of teenage boys...::

[Jorath Calar]

Hold the guilentine! (or however it is spelled... you know that cool thing the french cut off heads with [img]smile.gif[/img] )... but here is what you could do... it's a long stretch but it might work.

First go to a friend or a neighbor and have them make a boot disk for you, if thats not possible, your local library or school might help.
It's a pain but really the only thing to do I think...

Then go to this side and get their dos antivirus which is free and detects and cleans anything, bootviruses too.

Well I hope thats some help, if not then I'll just wish you good hunting [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Galadria]

(Thinks what she'd do to stepson if he did a thing like that) Well Garnet, hun, you're on your own from here, but I hope what Jorath suggested works. If not, why don't you e-mail Memnoch? I think he'd know. (Shudders at the thought of DOS)

If it is a boot sector virus, you will probably have to fdisk the drive, since formatting doesnt clear the boot sector....at least I think it doesnt. Good luck..and just keep telling yourself that infanticide is against the law

[Cloudbringer]

Argh! Here you go, Garnet [img]graemlins/beheaded.gif[/img] in case you get past the creative maritime cursing, that is! LOL

Boy, that's not fun! I'm not sure, but you may be better off reformatting your hd after you clean the boot virus. Every time you boot up the pc now there's a chance it's doing more damage.

Check Norton of McAffee's sites for the possible cures. I think you can search by virus name if you know it.


Cloudy

[Garnet FalconDance]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jorath Calar:

First go to a friend or a neighbor and have them make a boot disk for you, if thats not possible, your local library or school might help.
It's a pain but really the only thing to do I think...

Then go to this side and get their dos antivirus which is free and detects and cleans anything, bootviruses too.

---

We went to a neighbor's house and did just that last night--but they run Win 95 and it doesn't hve some file we need. We seem to be the only ones foolish enough to run (Edit: more cursing) Me.

Um, Jorath, I really appreciate it, but the url you gave leads to a *volleyball* site> [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] Do you have the name of the site?

::glowering:: If I have to reformat my entire hard drive and lose all the multitude of files, documents (for a writer, this is devestating!!!), and games...........just address my mail to the local maximum security 'cause that's where I'll be after I kill the little buggers!

[Galadria]

(shudders at the thought of losing her novel) Garnet, how about [img]graemlins/whipitgood.gif[/img]

[Jorath Calar]

I feel infinitely stupid... its http://www.avp.ru I just checked and I can't find the dos program any more... sorry about my uter uselessness

Note to self... check sites you havn't been to in awhile before you post them... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Garnet FalconDance]

It's ok, Jorath.......I thought it rather amusing when I clicked onto the volleyball site looking for anti virus [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Downloaded the virus fix-it kit (cleans the drives and sets protections against this happening again--recommended solution for this bug) on my mom-in-law's machine yesterday. Got the floppies all lined up to copy and bring home the goods---but her pc runs XP and even when I got the compatibilities worked out, her pc decided it wouldn't read the floppy (didn't mattter which one--they were all brand new--just didn't feel like it, I suppose). Did get a boot copied over tho, but the command line is different from XP to ME and, you guessed it, the boot won't work either! And until I can get the cursed drivers to boot, I can't use the boot cleaner! (insert a little more creative language)

So, I'm going to devote the day to A) finishing cutting firewood from the debris of the icestorm and B) piddling around with this machine. It is most frustrating when I can't pop in a cd and play (or even reinstall my publishing program ). Of course, the kids don't mind the cd part *too* much---a portion of their school work is software based (homeschooled)!

Thank all the gods of Earth and Faerun it doesn't affect web-surfing, posting or e-mails!!!!!!!!!!!