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Thread: IS this possible to corrupt Vista?

  1. #1
    Junior Member
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    IS this possible to corrupt Vista?

    IS anybody can corrupt just pluggung in USB disk to Windows Vista?

    Because I have re installed my vista when one of my friend connected his USB Disk to my pc suddenly my pc restarted then then it shows no boot disk / disk boot failure. insert disk boot

    I am unable to know what happened, after recovering my DVD i gained my old OS.

    Can u help me on this

    Regards
    Nataraj . S . Asture

  2. #2
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
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    Corrupt it? Dunno about that? Sure it isnt infected with Virii???

    Any OS can corrupt itself very easily ...
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

  3. #3
    Senior Member gore's Avatar
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    This happened once at a trade show with Windows 98. It Blue Screened in front of everyone. It was while they plugged in a USB device.

    It said that text after maybe because it was storage. Did you remove it after and restart again? It may have been trying to boot off the USB drive. and given you an error similar to the old Floppy non system disk error.

  4. #4
    Gonzo District BOFH westin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gore View Post
    This happened once at a trade show with Windows 98. It Blue Screened in front of everyone. It was while they plugged in a USB device.

    It said that text after maybe because it was storage. Did you remove it after and restart again? It may have been trying to boot off the USB drive. and given you an error similar to the old Floppy non system disk error.
    lol. One of my favorite videos.

    So you actually had to reinstall the OS? What was on the thumbdrive? Cider might be onto something as far as an infection... ?? Just for future reference, you may want to turn off autoplay:

    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

    [First link that came up in my search... should be accurate... I hope. :-P (I don't have a Vista machine to test on currently)]
    \"Those of us that had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts, we wanted strong drink.\"

    -HST

  5. #5
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
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    http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeuse...ds/usbvaccine/

    We got a GUI tool that can do the autorun disabling. Once installed - any removable that gets connected will give the option to vaccine it - therefore disabling autorun on the Thumb drive ...
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

  6. #6
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Hello nataraj,

    suddenly my pc restarted then then it shows no boot disk / disk boot failure. insert disk boot
    That is not corruption in my opinion it is a deliberate action. Your machine was given an instruction to reboot, presumably from the CD/DVD drive, although it could be some other media/location.

    Did you power down, remove the USB device and then do a cold restart? I would normally expect that to solve the problem.

    If it did not, then a program was loaded that runs before Windows startup, and overrules your BIOS settings on restart. I would certainly expect a Windows repair install to get rid of it.

    As gore mentioned, the error message is common, and can be reproduced by leaving non-bootable media in a drive that is above your primary hard drive in the BIOS boot sequence (order). That will work for Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT4.0, 2000, XP and Vista as it is a BIOS message.

    If your Windows had been corrupted I would expect a BIOS message along the lines of "cannot find operating system" or the much more probable blue screen with error messages in white text. That means that Windows was detected but doesn't work for whatever reason.

    Whilst it is possible that this was some sort of recovery program, I very much suspect malware. I would strongly recommend deep scanning with AV and anti-malware tools in safe mode.

    I would second westin's suggestion to turn off autorun/autoplay. OK you may find it very convenient, but so do malware authors

    Good luck!

    P.S. Don't forget to tell your friend to turn off autoplay and scan his drive

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