Re: Corrupt partition or virus?

From: Linda B (someone_at_microsoft.com)
Date: 02/03/05 

Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 09:27:04 -0800

It sounds to me like drive and/or partition problems. There are very few
viruses out there that are capable of rendering entire directory structures
corrupt in the fashion you're describing, and I seriously doubt that any of
them are contractable over the internet; so unless you've been putting
dubious media into your computer (or intentionally downloading and
installing shady files) I don't think it's a virus.

It's entirely possible that you just bought a lemon of a hard drive -- after
spinning at 7200rpm for a couple of months, something easily could have gone
wrong with the read heads, or even on the surface of the drive -- but either
way it's much easier for me to imagine file/directory structure damage like
you describe taking place because of faulty hardware than virulent software.

I'd try running chkdsk on the drive, or a more comphrensive diskcheck
program if you have one available. If the program comes back with bad
sectors and the drive is still under warranty, I might take advantage of
that warranty.

--LB

"Steve" <Steve@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4E4D8CA7-FB6E-440A-A5AF-3730C6352760@microsoft.com...
> Greetings,
> I recently purchased a WD2000 drive for my home machine. Installed XP and
> have been running it for a few months now - no problem. Last night I got
an
> error whe trying to open my email client (said it couldn't find a
particular
> file). When I re-booted I got a message NTLDR missing. I proceeded to
follow
> all of the MS instructions on how to replace the boot files, etc , etc.
Still
> wasn't able to get back into windows.
>
> I checked the dir in the recovery DOS mode and all of the file names and
> properties are now in some weird character language. So I decided to take
a
> look at the files by making the drive a slave to a different machine. I
was
> able to view the drive, but all of the folders (even the drive name) has
> weird character names and I am unable to access them.
>
> To me - it sounds like a corrupted partition or some type of virus. Any
> words of wisdom on how to recover the data on the drive would be extremely
> helpful and appreciated. Also, what would cause this if it was a corrupt
> partition?
>
> Thanks
>

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