Got Virus... Hilarity Ensues (Needs the Help)

[schild]

So.

Virus ate every EXE on my drive where all my apps and games are installed. Has spread to C drive as of this reboot. Formatting.

This is going to be a fucking mess.

[Trippy]

You figure out where it came from?

[schild]

Nope. Coulda been there for years laying dormant.

Probably email though. I must get a hundred mails with attachments a day and I very well may have opened one accidently.

[Trippy]

Get a Mac. Seriously. You can run Boot Camp on it for those few times you actually lower yourself to play PC games.

[schild]

Because I got a virus?

Are you kidding? Virii are natures way of reminding you to format every once in a while.

Edit: And if anyone follows up the following comment with something that turns into macs vs. pc, I'll start shooting.

That said, Macs are slow, sloppy, overpriced, crashy pieces of shit. At least, that's my experience post the LCII. Also, they explode.

Edit 2: Wait, were you joking? The only reason I have a PC is Word, Excel, Media, and Games. The only reason to use a mac is if I wanted my desk to look more art faggy.

[Cheddar]

Macs suck.  Walking grandmothers through how to set one up is even suckier.  I am officially anti-mac.

[Trippy]

Because I got a virus?

Are you kidding? Virii are natures way of reminding you to format every once in a while.

Edit: And if anyone follows up the following comment with something that turns into macs vs. pc, I'll start shooting.

That said, Macs are slow, sloppy, overpriced, crashy pieces of shit. At least, that's my experience post the LCII. Also, they explode.

Edit 2: Wait, were you joking? The only reason I have a PC is Word, Excel, Media, and Games. The only reason to use a mac is if I wanted my desk to look more art faggy.

No I'm not joking. I'd figured I'd suggest it given how much you hate PC gaming. Macs aren't slow since the move to Intel, assuming you are running a Universal binary (compiled for both Intel and PowerPC). OS X is as stable or more so than XP unless you are using a networked folder in the Finder in which case all bets are off. Overpriced I'll give you though that's in part cause they only have one model where you can add your own video card and that happens to be the top-of-line Mac Pro. There are Mac versions of Word and Excel or you can run them through Parallels if you have to run the Windows versions. Same with the various media formats. As for the art part you can hide the Dock or get a replacement.

Edit: plural is better

[schild]

I don't hate PC Gaming. I just don't play much mainstream stuff and no one here wants to hear about my bouts with Shanghai Alice shooter titles (Perfect Cherry Blossom, etc), obscure japanese puzzle games, and mame. Or maybe they do. Anyway, yea, I've got to stick with PC.

[NiX]

Or maybe they do.

Please to be hearing of these things, thanks!

[Falconeer]

I love Phantasmagoria of Flower View. I hate myself for not being able to read the story.

[Triforcer]

Do you read Japanese or just power through untranslated games?  Just curious.

[Falconeer]

Do you read Japanese or just power through untranslated games?  Just curious.

I can't read Japanese and that's why I hate myself (I mean, just one more reason). Don't know about Schild but if he can read it I think I'll steal his life phantom of the opera style as soon as I meet him IRL.

[schild]

I can't read Japanese. But any game where the Japanese is necessary to enjoy the game probably has derivative gameplay. JRPGs, Dating Games, and whatnot. Most JRPGs tend to get a Euro or US translation. Even some that don't end up in English once they get an Asian release. Most of the stuff I play on my PC are doujin fighters and shooters - for which you need no absolutely know Japanese to enjoy.

[schild]

Now, about my computer. I backed everything up I wanted and proceeded to change the Bios to boot from USB CDRom like I have every other time. For some reason however, it says it can't find the NTLoader on my (LEGIT FOR REALZ) copy of Windows XP. Literally, I removed the dvd from the pamphlet and put it in, third or fourth time I've used it post format. Every other time it just boots from CD. Now it doesn't. So I decided to try to install Windows while in Windows, so it would load that boot shit and reboot to it from the HDD. NO LUCK. Prompt says "You can not install this version of Windows since the version you have is newer." WTF.

Help?

[Trippy]

Are you on IRC or IM?

Edit: Check the CD in Ookii's or somebody else's machine over there to make sure it really is bootable. If so, make sure your external USB device is set to boot first and disable the booting from the other devices. If that still doesn't work disconnect your hard drives and other bootable devices to make sure your MB really can in fact boot from an external USB device and you weren't just imagining things. If that doesn't work borrow an internal CD/DVD-ROM drive from Ookii or another person in your house and try booting off of that.

[schild]

Oh, I had no problem booting from this drive just 6 months ago.

The last thing we tried was disabling the HDD's from being boot devices in the BIOS and making the CD-Rom first.

...didn't work (lols). Still, somehow, ended up booting Windows from HDD0.

Would it be possible to get one of those linux bootloaders that installs into memory, use that to format my drive as NTFS, and then take the bootloader out, put the XP CD in, and run the install?

[Trippy]

Oh, I had no problem booting from this drive just 6 months ago.

The last thing we tried was disabling the HDD's from being boot devices in the BIOS and making the CD-Rom first.

...didn't work (lols). Still, somehow, ended up booting Windows from HDD0.

Would it be possible to get one of those linux bootloaders that installs into memory, use that to format my drive as NTFS, and then take the bootloader out, put the XP CD in, and run the install?

You need a CD-ROM drive you can boot off of first before you can run one of those Linux "live" CDs that will let you reformat a partition. Your BIOS may have gotten screwed up and if you want to take the risk you can reset it back to the factory settings and then redo the bootup devices. Or just borrow an internal CD/DVD drive from somebody.

[schild]

I've always feared the "Reboot Bios" option. That won't downgrade the firmware or anything stupid, will it? If not, then I might as well do that. It's not like it's going to erase my HDDs.

[Trippy]

I've always feared the "Reboot Bios" option. That won't downgrade the firmware or anything stupid, will it? If not, then I might as well do that. It's not like it's going to erase my HDDs.

It won't change the firmware version but for example if you had to tweak the settings to get it to work with your memory you'll have to redo all that otherwise things might not work properly. You should also check it afterwards that your CPU is set at the right speed (it should pick it up automatically but you never know).

[Sky]

Macs are slow, sloppy, overpriced, crashy pieces of shit. At least, that's my experience post the LCII. Also, they explode.

You = ignorant. I'll give you overpriced, though.

If you can get the cd drive working, there are quicker/easier options than a linux boot. Can't mention what it would be, since it's hacky, but it's been mentioned here before (it's where I found it and OMGTHANKS). Great boot cd with a ton of utilities on it.

[Engels]

How about a repair installation? If you can get the WinXP CD to boot, after you hit f8 for install, it should detect a pre-existing WinXP installation on your hard drives. You can then perform a repair install, which basically strips all existing drivers and reinstalls from scratch. This works well with machine that don't require newfangled raid drivers.

[schild]

How about a repair installation? If you can get the WinXP CD to boot

If I could get the WinXP CD to boot, I wouldn't have asked what the problem was :).

[Engels]

Yep, I knew that! Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought that your computer couldn't finde the ntldr file on your back up (which is presumably on another hard drive?). In the event you get a CDrom working as a bootable device, all I was saying was to repair your backup, since that seems to have a missing ntldr, or a misdirected pointer.

[schild]

My CD is a retail WinXP DVD. It has all the necessary files on it, I've used it for install before.

[Evil Elvis]

Sounds like a problem with your Master Boot Record.

I know windows repair has a 'fixmb' command, but since you can't get the dvd to load... this page has a link to a free MBR repair tool: http://www.ambience.sk/fdisk-master-boot-record-windows-linux-lilo-fixmbr.php

If that doesn't work, you can try downloading the Hirens Boot CD.  It's free, and some of its tools can run in windows.  It might have a MBR repair tool in it somewhere.

[Righ]

Are you kidding? Virii are natures way of reminding you to format every once in a while.

Good to see that you value your time so highly. Sounds to me like your BIOS is munged, BTW.

[Sky]

Maybe you should use a DVD drive instead of a CD drive.

Also, there are thumbapps you can possibly use from a usb thumb drive?

[Evil Elvis]

And start using Thunderbird or Evolution (for Windows) if you're using Outlook Express.

[schild]

 I was using Thunderbird. I haven't used Outlook for 2+ years.

[schild]

Alright.

1. I've reset the BIOS. Nothing.
2. I tried a different genuine XP CD, nothing. I've only got 2 Windows XP Pro V.2002 discs. The rest are useless Dell OEM discs.
3. I tried unplugging the harddrive. Nada.

I'm thinking, maybe, I should try upgrading the BIOS on the mobo? Heh. This sucks.

[Evil Elvis]

Look into your MBR.

[Lantyssa]

Have you tried an internal drive as suggested earlier?  I've had the worst time with making USB drives boot when they needed to, even if they worked in the past.

[schild]

Why would an MBR make a difference? I'm not doing anything with the HDD.

[stray]

MBR is often a target for viruses. Doesn't hurt to rewrite it at least.


I couldn't tell you how though. I forgot how to do that with 2K/XP ;). It used to be "fdisk /mbr" in DOS.

[schild]

When I get to the format utility, if I do a full format, won't it rewrite the MBR anyway?