Okay, So I had over 9,000 infected files with this loveletter virus, so I decided to just reformat because I thought I had to delete all the files. I TRIED reformatting twice, I did everything in the manual, when windows started up “for the first time” I got a blue screen of death error. I had to restart, so I did, then when i started it up, some screen came up and said my registry settings were working (something to that effect) then the windows loaded, and all my old stuff was there!!! WTF? I tried this twice. Now here is the really bad part. Turns out that when I cured the virus, all the deleted files return! I never had to reformat(I was going to reformat because I thought that I would have to reinstall most every program since they would all have missing files). Now some programs don’t work, icons are greyed out(wiped out in the reformatting?) I think I got an error message that said this program wasn’t in the directory or the pathing wasn’t correct or something.
Oh man, what do i do?
Are you sure you formatted? No offence intended at all, but it doesn’t sound like you did.
When you format ALL information is wiped from the hard drive. There would be no OS to boot up.
If, as you claimed, you formatted twice, you would have then had to reinstall your OS twice.
Do you have more that one drive that may have infected files?
What to do:
Get an uninfected boot disk or make on an uninfected PC. Boot up the PC with the boot disk and when the command prompt comes up ( A:> ) type the following:
format c:
When it asks you if you are sure, hit “Y” and “Enter”.
You disk will now start formatting. When the format is complete reinstall your OS. you will also have to reinstall ALL other programs.
WARNING: if you are unsure about this procedure, then get someone who is comfortable doing this.
Yeah, I put in the Windows 3.5 disk and the CDrom, restarted, followed the instructions in my Dell manual, and reinstalled windows. Then when I started up I got the blue screen of death and restarted using the restart button on my tower. Now certain icons are greyed out in my comp.
Start up to a DOS prompt. Fdisk it. Remove the main partition. Reboot again. Fdisk again to create partition. Reformat. Install OS.
I know of no virus that can withstand that, other than one that may screw up your bios somehow.
Apparently, I did something called a “dirty install” or something like that. And that is why I screwed everything up. I guess, I just have to back up and reformat with a Dell person over the phone. I am gonna kick my friend’s ass who told me to reformat.
I was going to suggest that, but (And with absolutly NO offence to kgriffey79) I wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with PC’s and FDisking could cause more frustration for the guy.
Kgriffey79, I hope you get things working soon. (I never did fully trust those restore CD’s that come with retail boxes.)
Actually, it’s possible for a virus to hide from this type of cleaning if the boot disk is writeable. The theory is that the virus will write itself onto a writeable disk and then write itself back once the fdisk/format is done. I haven’t seen any recent viri that make this kind of effort, though. Of course, with newer pcs that have bootable cdroms, this kind of effort isn’t justified because there’s no way a virus will be able to write itself onto your cdrom. Just to be safe, when you create a boot disk from a clean pc, write protect the boot disk and leave it that way.
How did you reformat? From Dos or windows?