OFF: virus help

[M Holmes]

Neil Ward writes:

> If it's not detected in the BIOS then it's a failed hard drive.

It certainly gives that impression. Are there viruses that can access
the CMOS to mess with the bootup?

> What
> make/model and how old is it?

It's less than a year old. I think it was a Diamond 60Gb drive, though I
could check.

> Hard drives are not the most reliable pieces
> of hardware, I've seen quite a few dead ones myself, one failing over a
> period of a few minutes, gradually losing files and slowing down the PC
> dramatically.
>
> I hope you had a decent backup,

Well the system and files as of 10 months ago are on the 8Gb drive that
I disconnected when the new drive went in. Hopefully if that's
reconnected then I can recover function.

>or nothing valuable on it.

I'd lose some Hawkwind files I'd started work on and some other
stuff. It'd be annoying given the time spent working on it but there it
is. I'd meant to set up a backup system using the 8Gb drive but some
glitch on the motherboard prevented both drives being connected at once.

Messing about with LS120's or CDRs for backup just seemed more trouble
than it would be worth. Maybe I'll rethink that now. What backup
systems/strategies do you folks use on home systems?

> Neil.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "M Holmes" <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK>
> To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 11:15 AM
> Subject: OFF: virus help
>
>
> > Having seen various messages about viruses pass by the list, I thought
> > maybe those with experience could offer advice.
> >
> > Last night, after copying some CDR's I shut down the (Win 95)computer.
> What I
> > saw was massive and prolonged hard disc access followed by a message
> > "Unable to access drive C:" (That's the system drive on my PC) After
> > that it failed to pick up the boot drive on bootup. I put in a boot
> > floppy, did a SYS A: C: and then booted from the hard drive. I got the
> > system up and immediately upgraded the McAffee data files. I then tried
> > to upgrade the McAfee product and got a failure mssage, followed again
> > by massive hard drive activity. This time I powered down. Now even with
> > the boot floppy I can only get DOS and the A: drive up. It can't see the
> > hard drive at all and it's not detected at the hardware boot.
> >
> > Lucy checked her work machine and found BADTRANS B virus and had it
> > cleaned.
> >
> > So the question is whether these rather worrisome symptoms are
> > consistent with that virus or whether it's something else.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > FoFP
>