my pc has a mbr virus and after booting from a clean startup disk and doing fdisk /mbr, my pc still has the virus. iv also tried installing different types of antivirus but the virus cannot be detected except on AVG antivirus (it says partition table mbr) but it does nothing to remove it. help on removing the virus and preventing it to reinstall itself will be greatly appreciated! btw if i replace the infected HD with a new HD, is there any chance that the new HD will get infected? tnx in advance

btw if i replace the infected HD with a new HD If that means you REMOVE the infected HD and plug in another, then NO. You wont infect the new hard disk. But if u mean connecting the infected HD as slave and another as master, then YES. There are strong chances that you will end up with the virus on both hard disks. I dont know if this would help, but have you tried a sys C: from a start up disk? Good Luck and Happy Computing, Kailas Shastry, India.

What name does avg give the virus apasrt from just saying its a master boot record virus? Woof

AAAARRGGH Just wrote a lengthy reply then IE crashed just before I sent it... Will endeavour to respond v soon (will write it in notepad n copy n paste - easier n safer) Watch this space...

Ahh, back at last. You have to trace the virus first. Find its name (you could visit AV sites, go thro' their databases in search of mbr virus names and search for them on your hard drive. Delete them then press "Control,Alt and Delete", if the processes are running then shut them down (if you dont then they will prob write themselves back to the hard drive and system-boot records/reg from memory at shutdown). Reboot with floppy, Fdisk/mbr, then reboot. check with AVG again. Also check within this key:- "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" see if there is a dodgy value in there (always back-up reg 1st). Try going to "Startbar" then "run", type "msinfo32", go to "tools", "System Configuration Utility", then "startup", have a looksee... Had the same prob years ago, virus started corrupting files from end of drive, slowly working to front, resulting in user files (ie docs, pics, etc.) being corrupted before system files. Sorry, cant remember name tho'. (will search all my info tho'.) You could also try McAfee's free online scan - "FreeScan" - registering costs nowt! Good luck and let us all know... Phil

ok i tried a new HD(borrowed a clean one from a friend) as primary and unplugged the infected HD, i did a clean boot from a startup disk, made new partitions, formatted, fdisk /mbr and started to install stuff from scratch but for some strange reason the new HD i plugged-in was getting the same symptoms(installation errors, corrupted and missing files) just like the infected HD. it also came to a point were the registry got messed up by the virus itslf. what im wondering is if theres such a virus that infects the 64M memory module or is it just HardDisks that gets infected? did a search here and found a reply that says... ____________________________________________ "I had the same problem just recently. I used both Norton and McAfee to scan and they found nothing. I have 2 drives, I fdisk/mbr both drives, and it still happened. Finally, I took my computer apart and re installed the memory modules one by one (I had 3) I finally found the problem by removing a 64M memory module." ____________________________________________ ==> does the 64m memory module get infected in any way? iv tried a clean HD but after using it in my cpu it seems to have gotten the virus itslf! ____________________________________________ error i get ==> internet explorer then crashes during mcafee freescan IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown> at 0000:5ad699e3. Registers: EAX=0058a1dc CS=0187 EIP=5ad699e3 EFLGS=00010246 EBX=0058a264 SS=018f ESP=0058a1c0 EBP=0058a220 ECX=0157b960 DS=018f ESI=03c74fa4 FS=35bf EDX=0058a24c ES=018f EDI=0058a26c GS=0000 Bytes at CS:EIP:

the virus also corrupts downloaded files (including zip archives) and most installations are interrupted. avg bootup scan doesnt detect any virus during startup nor does any other virus scanner and only avg detects something in win98 quick scan ==> it says PARTITION TABLE, MBR