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| Thread ID: 77092 | 2007-02-26 17:57:00 | Reformatting OS (XP)..? | DailyNhtly (11930) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 528334 | 2007-02-26 17:57:00 | Acquired a nasty little Trojan on my HP Pavillion. The usual fun things, shutting itself down, stalling out programs, changing file extension names, etc etc; it also managed to 'hide' all of my drives so my poor PC didn't know it had any CD drives. I can now 'see' the drives via the 'Run' command on the start menu, but I cannot do much of anything with the contents as it will not auto-run and trying to manually open/run any of the icons, it merely changes their extensions and allows other programs to try and open them (and you cannot do an 'open with'). So I cannot just boot from the HP recovery or XP disk, and going into BIOS, I can't change my boot sequence (it is now set for the HD first), as my other drives are permanently disabled. It will not let me enable them... I have never encountered any virus that would mess with the hardwiring to the motherboard, but it did do similar things in XP itself (i.e. hiding the drives), could this be possible? If this is so, how in the heck am I supposed to reboot this thing and reformat the OS?? Thank you :( |
DailyNhtly (11930) | ||
| 528335 | 2007-02-26 18:22:00 | Welcome to PF1 :) I have not heard of a virus that hits the BIOS... either that or the BIOS is locked by HP. take the HDD out of the PC (or just disconnect the power and IDE cable) and then try and get into the BIOS and change them. |
The_End_Of_Reality (334) | ||
| 528336 | 2007-02-27 01:12:00 | If you're lucky (and by the sound of it your not), you could try shorting the mobo memory. You could then be able to boot from cd, or floppy, which is sometimes the default. You could use an old cd boot disk to then run the cd, or at least go to a dos prompt and run/format from there. The manual or internet will show you where the jumper is if you're not sure. | eldarcolonel (7392) | ||
| 528337 | 2007-02-27 02:00:00 | I would express doubts that this is the result of a trojan. Years ago there were viruses that cleared the BIOS but modern PC's are mostly hardware protected against that. It had different outcomes to the above as well. What was the Trojan name, how can you be sure that this issue relates to it? |
godfather (25) | ||
| 528338 | 2007-02-27 05:08:00 | Thanks for the welcome and the ideas :) Alright, update... Don't know how but after unplugging and replugging and rebooting a million times, I managed to find the CD-Rom in the BIOS so I booted from the CD and reinstall Windows after clearing all the partitions. It looked like it went through the complete reinstall, then rebooted, I saw the Windows logo and off to a black screen for an indefinite period of time. Tried again and again with a complete reformat. Then went into DOS (via the "Repair" option off the XP CD) and just cleared off the C drive and then booted off the CD again and reinstalled, same result. So I'm guessing this computer is dead? It's certainly not worth the money it would cost to get it repaired. Anyone have any ideas on what the real issue is? The hard drive? I have no qualms about buying a HD to stick in there and try (can always use that again) but I don't have any other ideas. Thanks :) |
DailyNhtly (11930) | ||
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