[Grimm]

hey i got some more news. apprently i had a pretty well made virus in my system for a while. it was restarting my computer, crashing windows explorer and blocking google and generally making firefox run worse.

so i wanna know if anyones ever seen this: my homepage is google, and when i opened it up with firefox, a download windows came up asking me wut i wanted to do with a file i was about to download. i always hit cancel, but everytime i navagate to google id get this window and google would never open. and if i tried to use the google search bar in firefox it would just hang forever.

when i tried to use safari, it would open, then give me the "safari has encountered a problem and needs to close" message. and if i tried internet explorer, it would just hang like there was no connection (but i guess this isnt serious, cuz its been doing that since i installed XP)

i guess the virus took a normal course of action, copying itself and sending itself thru email cuz my mom got an email from comcast saying our network was sending spam. i scanned my comp this morning from another drive running vista and it caught 6 infected files, all of which were deleted or cleaned, and now the virus is gone

but my main question is, does anyone think these 2 problems were the same virus? or should i keep looking out for moreand if the scan would have caught them all. (scanner is avast antivirus home)

[Squall]

think thats bad grimm i actually had a virus if you tried removing would rename itself and copy itself to another directory. it removed explorer.exe (not IE but the explorer needed to power your desktop) it removed taskmanager/msconfig rights. everything i could do to try and remove it.. it did it.

Then the biggest shock was loosing all my music/videos/new movies/games on my second hardrive because ..it copied itself to there also. if i opened up my second hdd, it would auto copy itself to the system32 of my c drive and continue to do what it did vefore i formatted. it took 3 formats to figure out how to get rid of it. i couldnt even use internet at all lol

Your virus seems like a treat. heres what you do. safemode and run that antivirus untill you find it. (administrator account not your normal one)

Even fi you think your virus may be gone id still try booting in safemode just to be sure. and im not a big no all with vista im afraid so if anyone can clarify that safemode works the same as on the XP series etc then by all means head that route. to just eb safe atleast.

[Grimm]

jesus chist....thats a huge problem...its these peaople with no lives the tick me off so much, they have nothing better to do than to try and ruin other peoples computers...

ya mine isnt that bad, the scariest thing for me was when i first downloaded it and avast said "virus in this directory!!.......no wait, over here!!....o crap, no its over here now!!" and i literally watched it move around my computer before it settled itself down.

ya this one didnt remove anything idont think, it just crashed explorer.exe alot and made me try and download the file everytime i open firefox.

so ya, ill try the safemode scan. the virus is in my XP system, i just ran the scan from my vista hard drive, its not in my vista drive yet. i should run the can from my xp safemode?

(also, dont know if this is a product of the virus, but my XP refuses to shut down or log off. when i try and get out of my user in anyway, it shuts everything down, all the programs, but then just hangs there, so im left staring at my wallpaper and it doesnt do anything, i have to hold down the power button to shut it off)

[Grimm]

ok so i just wiped my drive and installed a fresh windows xp. however, as wut seems to be the patterm with my computer, the problems dont end.

before i wiped the drive, this drive (C) was the primary partition of a triboot system. windows warned me like 6 times not to erase this partition but i did anyway. after erasing, the computer could not boot, it couldnt find a certain file and told me to restart with control alt delete while i was still i the bios part of the boot.

having installed xp on the promary partition, it cleared this up and the computer can boot to this partition....only this partition.

Setup:

Primary partition (C) my drive [it is one half of the 300gb drive, devided into 2 NTFS file systems both with windows xp professional]

Julia's Disk (D) my sisters drive [the other half of the 300gb drive]

Secondary disk (E) this drive contains windows vista ultimate lite. it is a completely seperate hard drive (my old 40gb)

all 3 were set to multiboot. the system would start up, ask me if i wanted to go to windows vista or an earlier version of windows. id hit earlier versions and it would tell me to select one of 2 installations of windows xp (one is mine, ones my sisters) but since i wiped the primary partition and installed xp anew, it will only boot to the primary partition (C), it wont ask me about anything else. how do i fix this and get it to ask me about vista, then the 2 xp installations as it did before

[Chantelle]

sorry i have a very little time to post, you may wish to look at fixing your boot.ini

I think anyway, try and get you bootini to detect from msconfig

[DarkLink]

I'm sorry to tell you this but i think my friend had this virus. He fixed it by completely reinstalling windows. his comp works like a charm now. If nothing else works to get rid of it do what he did: reinstall windows. It would suck but at least ur comp would work right :/

[Grimm]

(btw: when i DID NOT have an OS on the main partition it gave me a notice that said "could not load NTLDR, press cntrl-alt-dlt to restart" if that helps in this investigation)

[Grimm]

ok all set. got something called EasyBCD that regulates and edits the vista bootmanager. i can now boot to all 3 of my OSs no problem

[DarkLink]

Wow that was so much better than my suggestion good job for finding a a much better solution!

[Grimm]

lol link i had already wiped and installed xp, the virus is gone, the problem was xp being a bully and kicking vistas bootloader in the ass and pretending vista didnt exist. but thats fixed now, but thanks for ur imput

[DarkLink]

oh so i posted my trying to help a bit too late then lol. oh well least ur comp works right now

[Chantelle]

nice one, thats pretty much what it is though the boot loader would have pretty much edited your boot ini files so you can see all the discs partitions etc and what partition holds what os... then the boot loader appears for a specified amount of time

[Grimm]

altho not all is well....i cant boot to my sisters drive, it says "failed to start" then something about NTLDR. what i think is wrong is that i have the MBR and boot.ini on the my 40gb vista hard drive, but i have no idea where NTLDR is, and my sisters xp installation needs it. mine boots fine for some reason...

[Chantelle]

This is where it gets sticky

I think general principals of setting up dual boots you should do oldest one first

thing is ... hmm i dunno, difficult to tell when your not at the terminal.

if its on a seperate disk unplug the disc with yours on, repair her installation and try that , see if that replenishes NT loader. or fix the mbr for that installation.

THing is not 100% sure about this but if you fixed it on windows 6 that might use a different loader method than on windows 5

[Grimm]

ill try reinstalling vista, theres noting important on it anyway, but, even if that replenishes the boot files on that drive, it might not work if the rest are skewed around the other drive

(my sisters drive is a logical drive off of mine, theyre both 2 halves of the same 300gb drive, so i cant unplug mine)

[Melissa]

can you not reload on that partition it shoudl be avaialble to you

[Grimm]

not sure if i know wut u mean

[Chantelle]

If your booting to the XP disc.. it will ask you to stipulate which partition you wish to replenish.

[Grimm]

ok, which ones do i wanna replenish, both XP drives?
then wut about vista, will it get rewritten again?

(the status code it gives me when i try to log onto my sisters drive is "File: \NTLDR Status: 0xc000000f" if that helps)

[Chantelle]

which ever one is broken tbh

but there is a possibility you may have to refresh easch one indivicually

ntldr is NT loader.

I imagine the XP one might be different to NT 6 (vista) which is why its gone a bit awol.

[Grimm]

well wen i looked it up, people were saying that when you have an xp installation, vista knows it and goes "ok, well im gonna sit here, when u press that little on button, ill come up and u tell me where u wanna go" but if u start with vista, and install xp, xp says "hey vista, get outa my space, ill take it from here"

xp overrides the vista boot controllers and takes over. what i dont understand is that i restored the boot systems on the xp installations, then on the vista one, then installed a program called EasyBCD that allowed me to control the vista boot loader and allow it to boot to whichever drive i want. that was the point at which my sisters boot loaders kinda jumped ship....

[Grimm]

well i got the damn thing working. vista boots my comp, allows me to choose my main drive. my main drive then lets me choose which partition i want, mine or my sisters. the boot.ini file that allows me to choose partitions is located on my sisters drive

my sisters drive is an extended partition, while the other partition is the primary partition (mine) is there any problem with having the main boot.ini file on an extended partitoion? should i move it to mine?

[Melissa]

Id have to check with chantelle (who also hasnt been around for a while) BUT ...

I dont think your supposed to install systems on extended partiions.. your supposed to use primary partitions.. that might be teh source of some of your problems since perhaps boot files are getting over written on the primary one.

[Grimm]

thats what i was thinking too. how would i convert an extended partition to a primary? (and if anyone says the word format, ill kill them)

[Melissa]

you cant, you will lose it all