What are some tech forums you guys use?

[Infamous]

I feel bad always posting on here, plus, it doesnt hurt yo have others looking too. Just dont know which to bother with or not. Anyway......

So i got my gaming rig back up and running.
A post i made last night stated i thought i had a bad HDD. Turns out the disc is fine, but has a virus.

Alureon

Encyclopedia entry: Win32Alureon - Learn more about malware - Microsoft Malware Protection Center


When i have that HDD hooked up to this fresh clean install, MS security goes nuts, cleans, and then has to restart in order to fully get rid of. Now , i had already written off the data on the disc, but is there anyway to clean it safely? Even when i goto mycomputer, right click to format that drive, i get the security warning too.

Should i just say screw it, format regardless of what happens to this install and reinstall again on fresh formatted drive? Its a 250 GB SATA as opposed to the old 160GB IDE i threw in to get to this point. just curious as to what you all think.

[Duke{CLR}]

Don't apologize for posting here because most of us here are more then glad to help.

With all the issues you have had I would bring the IDE drive on a one way trip to the shooting range and start with a nice clean install on the SATA drive.

[Infamous]

the SATA was the bad drive. my concern i guess is whenever the SATA is hooked up, i get that security warning..

should i just say format it anyway? i mean if the Trojan is on that could it somehow install itself on this one before it got formatted out?

i guess i am just nervous. i am so happy to have the rig up again, id rather have it on an old drive than not at all.

plus, i cant shoot my old drive, if it werent for it, id still be on the GF's laptop.

[Qicmee]

Situation so far: More than once, you've connected the SATA drive, gotten a security alert, allowed the software to clean the problem, rebooted, and then experienced the same problem again. If the SATA drive is disconnected, then everything is fine.

Since your PC runs Windows okay after cleaning, I recommend that you download & run Killdisk on your suspect drive (free version, one pass). It's a Windows program. Make sure you kill the right disk.
http://www.killdisk.com/

After this, reboot and see things are better. If the problem seems gone, I'd rescan my whole PC with anti-virus software.

If this doesn't help, then there's more to do.

[Infamous]

yeah, i freaked out a little after the first cleaning, so i did a full scan with malewarebytes and MS essentials. It is sort of nice having only 18GB total to scan, some of my old games were about that size alone.

If I dont take any actions with the anti virus will it quarantine the file allowing me to format safely? i guess thats a much better way to phrase my question.

[Infamous]

ok, ran kill disk, seems to be no virus,,, how do i get that drive to work now though. its recognized if i use kill disk again, but not in windows.

[DougBob]

You probably have to go into Disk Management and assign it a drive letter or it might need formatting.

[Qicmee]

Yup, like he said.

Here's a link, but it's about that easy.
Change, add, or remove a drive letter

[Infamous]

runing XP, so i cant seem to find its equivelant. The drive shows up in bios. but i cant install windows on it, it stalls out at the setup screen. I hear it spin up and has been wiped via that killdisk, as well as showing up in bios, so i assume its funtioning, but i cant get it to work..

my other disc from 2nd machine with vital info is fine so i think im gonna dump info off that, and put it in this machine( its also a 250gb SATA, same drive in fact) the IDE running this machine as we speak may just get tossed into 2nd machine.

[Qicmee]

In case you want to use it, here's a link for XP. I copied the most important part below.
How to install additional hard drives in XP

4. Open Disk Management in Windows XP.
From the Desktop or Start Menu, right click on My Computer and select Manage. This will open the Computer Management window. Click on Storage and select Disk Management.

[Infamous]

thx!!

(( i'd have never found that, let alone got it to work. thx a ton. windows saw drive, formatted. Going to unplug this IDE and see now if i cant get windows to install on the SATA))

[Infamous]

preplexed for sure still.... windows formatted the drive, it can read it, write on it, and i can pull files to and from it.

However , when i take this fresh fomattted disc and make it the only disc in system, and attempt to install windows, everything stalls out. I have the install disc, it fires up, loads some needed files, but it just sticks at " set up is starting windows " it stalls out there for at least 15 minutes.. am i just too impatient and let it go 20? when i did the fresh install for this machine, it pretty much fired right up.

so if i can read and write on th drive, it isnt defective is it? What would be causing it to not let a fresh install go on it? at this point its almost personal, lol just want to know what the hell is up with this drive..

also for what its worth, maxtor( drive brand) had a utility that is supposed to let me test it out, but upon trying to D/L file, i get am error, and am unable to recieve file( error is on websites end, not mine)

[Qicmee]

This might be complicated. If we can't resolve it here, you might need to start a new thread to get advice from the experienced system builders.

My best guesses - each is possible, but this problem probably has one cause.
a) You need to set the drive to "master" (flip a switch on back of drive, might need to look up setting on-line if not obvious)
b) An older BIOS might not recognize a 250 GB drive. This is not likely, but would be resolved by making partitions (to sub-divide it).
c) Treat the XP install as fresh, no shortcuts. The instructions should tell you to select and format a partition. This will make it a bootable partition. Step 5 in this link might be helpful. The writer is re-installing, but it seems like a good fit.
Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done

I think a delay of 15 minutes is too long, but I don't recall for sure.

[Infamous]

well this drive in question is the drive that used to run this system. So bios and all that should work. There is no jumper, i thought of that as i was switching my IDE jumper.

I went with fresh install, and non quick format on this IDE, so i know what those screens are, but the SATA doesnt seem to let me get to that point, and that is where i am just lost.

Could a virus still be on there after kill disk? could a virus effect the physical workings/mechanics of a drive, it seems to me a format if successful means drive works and no virus.. like i said above, very perplexing.

[Apache Warrior]

Could the Windows disc be scratched?
Apache