Virus , bad hard drive or both

Virus, bad hard drive or both
I am sure I have a virus on my computer all my searches with Google, yahoo and Microsoft live
Give the correct search results but when I click on the link I am taken to the wrong websites
mostly other spam sites. I ran AVG pro with no results.
I even tried formatting the hard drive and installing a clean copy of XP. The XP setup runs fine until I get to the part where I press F8. It than takes me to the screen with the list of hard drives that I can install XP on. I only have 1 hard drive in the computer and the XP setup tells me that it “cannot access the drive” So I can’t even format the drive and install XP.
I did a disk error-check in windows and it found nothing.
Any advice would be great, Thanks!

Google "kill mbr" and get a DOS app that will erase the master boot record on the drive.

Format and try the install again.

Thanks
Any Suggestions for a DOS app

If you can "obtain" a Hiren boot disk there are a few on it ;)

I use a "tech boot" disk that one of my co-workers used to make for us.

A quick google search pops up something called "Active Kill Disk" that looks like it should work.

Thanks

Good luck.

Let us know what happens

I will, looks like it could be a long night

never mind, seems like it undercontrol

I do have one last question,
If I were to take out the hard drive an hook it up as an external drive to another computer and format it from there. Would that be taking a risk on infecting the other computer?

Should be OK.

NTFS does not use MBR (master boot record)

Oh, really?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by N2bnfunn

NTFS does not use MBR (master boot record)

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Then why do people use a Win98 boot disk to fixmbr on a NTFS system ?


Still one of my fav tools when I have HDD troubles .


Boot the PC with a Win98 boot disk (http://www.bootdisk.com/),
then run the command fdisk /mbr
This works on FAT and on NTFS partitions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by N2bnfunn

NTFS does not use MBR (master boot record)

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All (AFAIK) PC hard drives use the MBR.
MBR and NTFS have nothing to do with eachother.:blink:

Says you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by clocker

Says you.

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You're really useless lately you know that? :lol:

Waachoo mean "lately", homie?

You were useful in 2004. :unsure:

Even that is generous, methinks.

To all you who prefer to format and reinstall whenever you face a problem.

You learn nothing by doing so.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 100%

To all you who prefer to format and reinstall whenever you face a problem.

You learn nothing by doing so.

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Sometimes a lot quicker tho , especially if virus troubles .

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tesco

You were useful in 2004. :unsure:

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I'm not sure he knows what year it is any more, now that you've dropped it from your name.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by peat moss

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 100%

To all you who prefer to format and reinstall whenever you face a problem.

You learn nothing by doing so.

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Sometimes a lot quicker tho , especially if virus troubles .

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Just put the drive in an external case, connect the drive to a non-infected system (make sure that autorun is turned off) and scan for viruses, including boot sectors.

That's got to be quicker that reinstalling windoze.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lynx

I'm not sure he knows what year it is any more, now that you've dropped it from your name.

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That was incredibly handy.
Would you mind being lynx2009 for a while?

I did find a virus and removed it and everything worked fine
but I figured it was about time to reinstall windows anyway, been over a year.
I have another problem that I have not seen before at leasst not in a long time. I have two 500GB hard drives in the computer. when I press f8 in the windows setup process it says that "Setup did not find any Hard Disk"
the BIOS sees them just find, whats up!!

Why would you press f8 in setup ? Your booting from CD to reinstall right ?

right, boot from XP CD it loads the stuff from the CD you press Enter to install windows then F8 to go to the list of Hard Drives that you can potentially install Windows.
Basically Windows Setup is not seeing either one of the hard drives in my computer

Sorry I had f8 safemode on the brain , unplug the slave hdd and then try .

I guess you could always format before hand.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Or even for that matter use an off line/boot scanner.

http://www.lockergnome.com/windows/2...f-i-cant-boot/

But having a fresh image of Windows with all you favorite apps installed and only takes a few minutes to restore is priceless :)

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-gui...age-xml-335831

One thing no-one seems to have thought to ask.

What motherboard do you have and what type of drive?

I'm thinking that if you've got the motherboard set up for RAID mode, or it is a SATA drive and the motherboard doesn't present it as IDE compatible then you need to press F6 while setup is loading and provide the drivers before you can install windows.

If you haven't got the drivers you should be able to download them from the motherboard maker's site.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lynx

One thing no-one seems to have thought to ask.

What motherboard do you have and what type of drive?

I'm thinking that if you've got the motherboard set up for RAID mode, or it is a SATA drive and the motherboard doesn't present it as IDE compatible then you need to press F6 while setup is loading and provide the drivers before you can install windows.

If you haven't got the drivers you should be able to download them from the motherboard maker's site.

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Yep this is correct:D This is what I wound up doing
Everything is running smoothly now:)