Nasty virus won't let me format

Souness · 28 Jan 2011 at 13:53

My sister at uni has a virus. She can't boot into windows anymore, not even in safe mode.

I sent her the windows CD and tried talking her through formatting, but the virus is stopped that too!

We changed the boot order to CD first, restarted the comp, then when it says "boot from windows cd/dvd" it just displays a flashing "_" and you're unable to type anything.

Yes, CD had been cleaned and USB keyboard has been enabled in bios, so I doubt it's anything simple like that.

Is there any way to format this HD?

Cheers

Deleted member 77746 · 28 Jan 2011 at 14:03

Souness said:
My sister at uni has a virus. She can't boot into windows anymore, not even in safe mode.

I sent her the windows CD and tried talking her through formatting, but the virus is stopped that too!

We changed the boot order to CD first, restarted the comp, then when it says "boot from windows cd/dvd" it just displays a flashing "_" and you're unable to type anything.

Yes, CD had been cleaned and USB keyboard has been enabled in bios, so I doubt it's anything simple like that.

Is there any way to format this HD?

Cheers

Don't you mean is there any way to get an operating system on it?

Yes, you can format it by putting the hard drive into another machine or in an external caddy.

Danny091 · 28 Jan 2011 at 14:07

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") http://www.dban.org/about

I like that program, just throw it on a disk stick it in the pc select the hard drive and let it do its thing. (just put it on the lowist settings, the rest is military style distruction of data which you wouldnt need).

It just rewites over the whole hard drive in a random algorithm making the date underneath unreadable. So you can start fresh.

Souness · 28 Jan 2011 at 14:59

Danny091 said:
Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") http://www.dban.org/about

I like that program, just throw it on a disk stick it in the pc select the hard drive and let it do its thing. (just put it on the lowist settings, the rest is military style distruction of data which you wouldnt need).

It just rewites over the whole hard drive in a random algorithm making the date underneath unreadable. So you can start fresh.

but will this work as the virus isn't letting me boot from a cd?

under normal circumstances i'd just try it and find out, but my sister doesn't have a cd drive on the netbook that she is temporarily using, or any blank CDs in her possession

Stelly · 28 Jan 2011 at 15:01

erm, there is no way a virus would not let you boot from CD, the message that you get "boot from windows cd/dvd" is on the CD not on the HDD. I bet the CD is corrupt.

A virus would only be active within Windows.

Stelly

Danny091 · 28 Jan 2011 at 15:01

Hmm, dont think that would be a virus.

Because when you go to boot from a CD it wouldnt even have loaded anything from the hard drive yet because it wouldnt have got to it in the boot order. Unless im incorrect ofc |:

Tilluss · 28 Jan 2011 at 15:05

Stelly & Danny are right, that's not a virus. You need to be looking at hardware not software for this issue.

Semple · 28 Jan 2011 at 15:06

Stelly said:
erm, there is no way a virus would not let you boot from CD, the message that you get is on the CD not on the HDD.

A virus would only be active within Windows.

Stelly

Pretty certain I've read articles of viruses infecting the BIOS. The virus could then be programmed to not allow the PC to boot from the CD.

Stelly · 28 Jan 2011 at 15:08

Semple said:
Pretty certain I've read articles of viruses infecting the BIOS. The virus could then be programmed to not allow the PC to boot from the CD.

Highly unlikely, the virus would corrupt not to boot at all, but its booting to the CD if he is getting that message, its not a virus that is causing the issue.

Stelly

pingwing · 28 Jan 2011 at 15:09

If that is a virus, what has your sister been watching?!?!?!?!!

An old mate had a virus of sorts that went for the bios of his old p2 pc (back in the day he liked downloading urm videos)

Never did fix it, but you could try a full bios reset by taking the battery out....

bledd · 28 Jan 2011 at 15:18

+1 to what Stelly said, some keyboards are funny about being recognised during this cd boot sequence

Try removing it and putting it in another slot, and make 100% sure it's enabled properly in the BIOS

Not a virus

Destination · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:48

Semple said:
Pretty certain I've read articles of viruses infecting the BIOS. The virus could then be programmed to not allow the PC to boot from the CD.

Citation needed please.

bledd · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:57

Older viruses used to do this, and mess with the mbr

Nowadays they're more about making money from clicks ads etc

Rroff · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:06

Its possible the ntfs.sys file on the HDD is corrupt - this will stop most versions of windows installer dead in its track as unfortunatly it will try to use the one off the primary HDD

will even cause problems if you try to mount the disc on another PC! if it is this issue then you'd have to use a version of windows that has a slightly different ntfs setup like win2k3 to recover the HDD first or a low level non-windows/dos based utility to boot and wipe the primary HDD.

matt_fsr · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:16

Try a Linux boot CD to see if that will work?

*notices forum title. /runs

Souness · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:24

Cheers I will get her to test some of these suggestions.

Going to be tricky though given that she initially thought the virus could spread to her netbook via the mouse :rolleyes:

ns400r · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:25

Hikari Kisugi said:
Citation needed please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_(computer_virus)

Saw it in action back in the day. It did corupt the BIOS.

Destination · 28 Jan 2011 at 19:18

Yes back in the day, he is unlikely to have a 12 year old virus, which won't infect any systems newer than win98....
BIOS overwriting viruses are exceptionally uncommon, and I doubt many users on thi forum would manage to contract one, and produce the results the OP is discussing.