Boot Sector Viruses

[PinguinoMafioso]

I have a serious problem, my hard drive (on another computer) apparently has a boot sector virus. I have no idea how it got it, but it's there and I need to remove it. I need help on how to remove it and how to prevent this from happening ever again. I'm pretty computer knowledgeable and I'm willing to go to any extent to fix this problem, since there's nothing important on that hdd. Sorry if this post is too brief and uninformative, but I have some stuff that I have to take care of, and I really need to take care of this problem. So thanks ahead of time and any comments or help ir anything else is appreciated.

[MrLinus]

Get a DOS boot disk. Make sure it has fdisk.exe on it. Boot with the disk. Type fdisk /mbr. *poof* Virus gone.

You could also use an AV boot disk.

[PinguinoMafioso]

Thank you very much, I really appreciate the help.

Where can I get a DOS or AVN boot disk?

And what is AVN?

I've never really dabbled in computer security before, and alot of theses things are new to me.

Sorry for bothering you with so many questions, it's just that I really want to learn about this stuff.

[Relyt]

Here ya go,


http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm


They have everything from Dos 5.0 to XP

[mjk]

You should be able to find some good stuff at www.bootdisk.com

I'm not sure what an AV bootdisk is... Probably AV stands for anti-virus but I don't know about an anti virus boot disk.

Anyways good luck in eliminating the virus. I hope it didn't screw your comp up too much.

Later,
mjk

EDIT: Damn Relyt beat me to it... My connection is way slow today. I hate dialup

[DeadAddict]

In windows 98 Go to the add and remove programs icon in the control panel then select the tab on the far right and there you go

[MrLinus]

Where can I get a DOS or AVN boot disk?

And what is AVN?

Anti-virus boot disk. Anti-virus programs startup AFTER passing the MBR so these bootdisks can be created for this purpose or if a virus is being particularly ornery. Most AV software have an option to create one after updates are done. Sounds like a habit that might be worth checking into after you've solved this.

[Beryllium9]

Ah, boot sector virii, now there's a blast from the past. I'll assume you're running win9x and not NT/2000/XP. Whilst the advice of using fdisk to overwrite the MBR is correct, you still have the problem of creating a clean boot disk. Every floppy disk you put in your drive is going to get infected, so you need to create the boot disk on a clean computer and not on the infected machine. Otherwise, you'll reinfect yourself whilst cleaning the boot sector. Once this is done and you've overwritten the boot sector, go into BIOS and enable boot sector virus protection to prevent reinfection.

The next step is to scan the PC for any remaining traces of the virus in case it's a multipartite virus. The preferred way to do this will be by using the repair floppies that any AV program will create for you, and scanning without booting from the hard disk. Once you've done this and the PC is clean, it's safe to start it normally again. Now, you have to go through every single floppy disk you've inserted into the PC whilst it was running. This is because they will all be infected with the virus due to the way BSV's spread.

A bit of advice to prevent this from happening in the future: Check your floppy drive doesn't have any disks in it when you start your PC. Alternatively, change your boot order to start from the hard disk first. This makes it almost impossible to get a BSV as other devices are only checked if the hard disk is in an unbootable condition.