I have an old 286 Wyse computer which got infected with a virus. I formatted my hard drive & reinstalled DOS & Windows. It functioned normally for two weeks & now for some reason I cannot access the hard drive. It says Hard Disk Failure, press F1 to continue. This is how it started when I caught the virus. I scanned all my floppy disk on my new computer before I installed my OS the second time & one was infected with the spanska aka (Elvira) virus which the virus scanner (Norton) cleaned. I have read some information on the internet. Some articles I read said that formatting only gets rid of viruses that are on a floppy & not on the hard disk. Others I read said it gets rid of viruses on hard disks & floppies. Which is true?

I don't know details about this particular virus but formatting will not get rid of a boot sector virus. You need to scan all your floppies and the hard drive again for the virus. When I had a boot sector virus and was using Mcafee, I had to get a special boot disk virus program to clean the boot sector. The regular program didn't do it. You should read the details of that particular virus at the Norton site to see what they suggest to clean it up.

Format.com and sys.com (from older versions of DOS only) should both replace the boot record on a HDD. I believe that they both leave the MBR alone, this is also a potential location for a virus to reside.

YOu should use the following format command: FORMAT C: /U/S followed by FDISK /MBR to clear the Boot Sector and the Master Boot Record

A few years ago I "caught" a virus that drove me nuts--ruined some floppys, etc. I bought abut 3 new 1.4 drives before I finally got wise--thing is I got all kinds of errors, I thought it was hardware. I COULD SWEAR that the thing was in the BIOS memory. According to a former IBM tech, this is possible. I finally got a CLEAN bootable disc, took out the bios battery and shorted the board's battery bus to drain it. Boot up with floppy (write protected) run fdisk and formant, and no more trouble. Then I found a version of Norton that would "fix" most of the floppys GOOD LUCK

Nothing like a good virus to teach the user about their computers.......yes? Formatting does not always get rid of a virus. Neither do all anti virus programs. Some anti virus programs can be infected themselves. Use 2 anti virus programs. Some motherboards can be destroyed...Example Packard Bell can require a new board if hit by Cherinoble...(SPELLING) It destroys the bios, which is soldered in rather than plug in. My last thought on the subject....is your anti virus program using the latest update? Update are free you know. So many good answeres in all the replys. Formating FORMAT C: /U/S Start with and older version of dos to overwrite.....then go ahead and use a newer version Say I like that idea..... W.L.

I caught a virus six months ago on an older computer that I could not find a GOOD antivirus program to run on it because of its age. I did not know anything about fdisk/mbr or format with the extra parameters. I did not even know it was a virus. I got ready to start Windows & typed Win. The computer said unknown parameter Win & would not start Windows. Thinking some files were corrupted, I deleted & reinstalled Windows. Within days the same problem occurred. A few days later and I could not start any program on my pc. The old microsoft antivirus program that comes with dos 6.2 would not start. A trip to the shop & I found out it was a virus. I sure wish I would have known about these great suggestions. Could have saved some money. It is hard when you have an older machine that cannot run the latest antivirus software today. It is a good thing you had a newer computer to scan your floppies with