Greets Guys,

Have been getting some regular cleanups lately that dont seem to fit a particular malware, and one item is too coincidental to be random hardware..

1/
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center]
"AntiVirusDisableNotify"=dword:00000001
"FirewallDisableNotify"=dword:00000001
"UpdatesDisableNotify"=dword:00000001
"AntiVirusOverride"=dword:00000000
"FirewallOverride"=dword:00000000
Spotted this with Spybot, each time I have encountered this the Antivirus has benn knobbled, NAV, McAfee and Trend Micro.. The Antivirus was not uptodate nore was it operational..
Oh and a crap load of parasites and worms

2/
Systems not booting to desktop - A quick glance of a BSOD screen with
"Unmountable Boot Drive"
.

Booting the same machines with a XP-PE cd shows an operational hdd..
a run of HDD Regen finds a bad sector.. and only one..
it repairs..
I reboot the system after the scan has completed 5Gb of the drive..
windows does a file integrity test,
boots without a hitch to the desktop
spyware/antivirus scans are varied some machines have a **** load of parasites and worms others with near zero,, Mind each of these have had the xxxxDisableNotify regkey set.

this second problem has been with some 10 or more machines this week.. just that symptom..

So is there a malware that is damaging boot sector information on hdds that I have missed the informations ..
Or am I encountering a series of coincidental hdd sector/cluster errors that cause the exactly the same error..

And as for the first issue.. It seems some users disable the Antivirus and Firwall notifications manually, I know this will happen with NAV (**cough**Crap**cough**), didnt know that the other two would also cause the same symptoms.... well I know that Trend dosent.. have deliberatly tested the installs I have done..
And it seems the safest fix has been to uninstall the antivirus, manually fix the keys, confirm the warnings are working then reinstall.. the antivirus installs/updates and all warnings appear to work through the process..

OK..

Anyone else encountering this pair, and thoughts?

thanks
Undies