Previous Messages 138541 and 138733.

I telephoned Microsoft USA (2nd time) and they have confirmed categorically that this is absolutely a "boot system virus" They suggested an MS site dealing with virus issues and the reinstallation of all the drivers etc., but I don't have time to do this as XP pc has been already down for a week and has already cost me £££/$$$. I have an existing pc with win98 setup on it and I am going to install xp pro on this machine and our software programs. Once this is completed which will be very shortly, i would like some straight-forward and explanatory advice please on how I successfully and without any hitches, add the old HDD to this new pc and how to pull the data from the old HDD to the drive on the new pc. I will be adding the CD-DVD from the old pc to the new pc if this helps.
I look forward to receiving your posts so that I can crack on with my work.
Many thanks. Danny

Firstly, when you have a problem, put it into Google, not Microsoft USA.

Put the old HD in ( jumpered as Master ) boot to the cd ( bios must be set to boot from cd & use the XP disk to format & install XP.
Booting means, putting in a floppy or cd & rebooting or starting afresh.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/6/4
A look at the Advanced Settings section of your BIOS, or > Bios Features
Setup.
http://www.pcmech.com/show/bios/16/

When finished, shut down & install 2nd HD ( jumpered as Slave )

Start computer & open Windows Explorer & copy & paste your info from the the 2nd drive to the 1st.

If you think you really have a boot sector virus, and I find most "experts" mistake ram corruptions for these, then running XP new install won't do squat about it. You need to low level format tyhe hard drive with a device that every jhard drive mfgr has on their sites to be certain.
I would first try slavingthe drive and copying all you need to the other pc, and don't waste alot of time.
Check in the bios, and see if there is a boot sector antivirus (probably turned off if there) or "chip away" av sometimes called.
Rescue disks on most good (and that means paid for) antivirus programs do have the ability to remove boot sector virus as well.

Hi Rich Mentzel - Thanks for your comments - just to recap, 1 week ago, I was typing text into an adobe pdf document and the computer suddenly switched off. When I re-booted the pc, I got around 50 lines of white text on a black screen saying "multi-disk(0)partition(1)partition(1)drivers etc,listing all the driver names and ending with system32 Unfortunately, I am unable to write down the text as the computer just re-boots. I have gone around in circles changing the bios settings to boot from the xp pro cd rom but this is unsuccessful. When I purchased the comnputer, I specifically asked the computer shop for 2 hard drives (due to previous data loss in the past) and when I collected the computer, there was a different person at the computer shop. When I asked this person if the new xp machine had 2 hdd's, he said no, i have just partitioned the drive into 2 on the 80gb hdd, so when we copied our data onto the new xp machine with nero, it all went into the c drive which is also where they installed the xp pro o/s. The new xp machine came with nero express but I decided to backup all the recent data by "copying and pasting" all the data to the ricoh cd-dvd writer, however when I installed the ricoh cd-dvd writer today on the 2nd windows 98 computer, it happily reads ordinary cd's but not the 4.7gb maxell dvd with the recent data - the computer shop have informed us that it is not possible to copy and paste data into a dvd-cd using this method and said that it can only be done by using nero express and burning the data to the dvd? is this correct? as I assumed the data would be on the dvd-cd rom? also, i noticed that sometimes the xp machine (when working fine) was looking at c:\-locals\my documents etc which makes me now assume that the data was actually on the c drive of the xp machine and not on the dvd at all. if this is correct, then we will not wish to fdisk and reinstall xp pro on the xp machine because there would be the risk of losing the data. Therefore, coming back to your comments, could you provide the url for low level format for the wd800 hard drive please? Also, I have tried using the seagate drive on win98 machine both on the cs setting and master setting and setting the xp drive to cs and slave settings but the bios does not pick the xp drive up and in fact, hangs after doing the memory text. It would be quicker for us to try and get the xp machine working with the xp drive installed but obviously we are unable to get the xp computer to boot because of the multidisk(0)partition(1) etc error. I don't know if it is worthwhile upgrading the win98 machine to xp pro via the xp cd rom and if that would make any difference to detecting the xp hard drive as a slave so maybe you would be good enough to let me know what your thoughts are. Once again, all the options 1 to 7 safe mode to last good config don't work and if start windows xp normally is chosen, I get the xp pro screen and the dotting lines and then the computer simply re-boots itself. Could you give your comments and also step by step instructions for what you suggest so that we can try and get the data back either off the xp hdd or the dvd-cd rom.
Many thanks
Danny123

Yes to the burning of data on a dvd-r with Nero or any dvd burning suite, you would need an rw to copy and paste in Explorer.
Low Level Format utility:
http://www.ameriwebs.net/groupworks/index.html
98 machine doesn't detect new hard drive because FAT32 file system cannot see NTFS. And there is no way to go backwards into FAT32 from NTFS either...so that said there now is another reason to upgrade the 98 machine to XP, but bear in mind that needs to be a clean install, because upgrades to XP do not work well from 98 or Me. Once second pc is on XP simply jumper the one drive master and the XP drive slave, and you should be able to boot up and copy whatever you want.
Personally if you wanted two hard drives in that machine and somneone built it for you, you should have insisted because an extra drive in the XP machine would have solved the problem.
Another idea which might be the best of all, is to get another hard drive, install it as master, install XP to it, then put the virus ridden drive in boot to a 98 floppy and find the small 8 meg partiton that has the boot sector on it, and on prompt go "fdisk /mbr to replace the boot sector, or even simply delete the boot sector on the bad drive in fdisk, delete partiton but of couse be certain it is the 8 meg one you delete!
But even if you don't want to do the deletions, simply boot up and take the data off the salve, then unplug the master boot to floppy from the low level format floppy you made from above url!

Rich M
www.kickenhardware.net

Hi Rich Mentzel
lots of ideas for me to work on thanks, but out of curiosity, if i put the virus ridden xp hdd in the win98 machine alone as a single drive then booted it with a win98 floppy to look at the c drive on the xp hdd, how would i get into the boot sector virus on c:\? I mean where would I find the small 8 meg partiton in order to delete the boot sector virus?
Thanks
Danny
p.s. failing this i think the clean install of xp on the 98 machine is the quickest but hope that it will convert to ntfs from fat32 otherwise, i doubt it will see the data on the xp hdd.

"fdisk" will show it as a "non dos partition".
At A prompt, type in fdisk and hit enter.

Hello again.
I upgraded win98 computer with xp pro as a new install with no problem.
Tried to use win98 seagate 4321 as master and western digital wd800 (with boot virus sector) as slave but no success.
I then removed seagate 4321 and replaced with wd800 with xp in dvd-cd rom and successfully got windows setup screen. at this point i phoned microsoft usa late last night as i could see the choice of where to install win xp cd rom which said
c: partition 1 (and showed megabytes of data and free space)
d: partition 2 (and showed megabytes of data and free space)
and 3, partitition with the 8mb showing. I chose to delete the third 8mb but after pressing D to delete nothing happened. With microsoft on the phone, they said not to choose to install xp on c: or d: as this would "OVERRIGHT" the data on c: and that c: would be the place where the boot virus exists and as there is only SP1 on c: instead of SP2 would not solve the issue.
Now in Limbo again
Did try mastering and slaving the 4321 and wd800 and swapping jumpers and going through all boot sequences but no luck in detecting the wd800 as a slave to copy the data first and do a "clean install of xp pro" on the wd800 to rid the boot virus. ms said the data is on the c: drive and advised to be cautious about doing a clean install of xp due to risk of overwriting the partition. however as there was never any data on the d partition, could a clean install be put on d? from the win setup prompt?
also, why is the master and slave operation not working? very confused now after spending a week on this issue and only making very small progress. already tried recovery consule but no success from winsetup.
more advice please, especially on mastering and slaving.
thanks very much
will check posts regularly
Danny

The only reason I can think of why the Wd drive did not show up as slave is that it was not jumpered right. The main drive must be "master with slave", not just master, and the slave drive must be jumpered as slave, and unless you are rewriting the book here, that did not happen.
I think with a week into this, it is time to find a traveling "geek" who could probably have resolved this in an hour.
It is too tough to try to do something this messed up by posting on a forum.

hi
in your post, what do you mean "master and slave"? do you mean i have to put 2 jumpers on the main drive, 1 in master and 1 in slave and just 1 jumper in slave on the secondary drive as there is nothing that says "master and slave"
please respond asap.
thanks
Danny

Drives should have diagrams of jumper settings.
If not tell us what brinad as they tend to be the same.

Plugged an old Western Digital WD28400 into xp machine (not the win98 machine) with boot sequence selected to boot from cd rom and still get "blue screen" saying "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer etc and the *** STOP *** message at the end - THIS is happening "without" the WD800 boot riden virus hard drive installed - what does this mean? Does this mean that this is a motherboard problem? bios problem or ram problem and not the hard drive????? please provide an answer to this question.

remember, ram has already been changed with a new stick and still have the old ram stick.

(also i wrote this earlier in response to your post - The boot sector virus (or so called) is on a Western Digital WD800 and the spare drive that we upgraded xp pro to is a Seagate Medalist 4321. The seagate says there should be 2 jumpers for "Master and non ATA" drive etc to connect a slave drive (the wd800) but already tried this and the WD800 still not recognised)

Awaiting some answers please!
thanks
Danny