a virus hit my PC :*(

[mstechca]

It isn't my PC, it is my MOM's PC.

Every time I want to use the internet, I use her PC because it is the one closest to the phone line. Yes, I use Dial-up.

Here is how it all started.

On April 26th, I just flicked the computer on, and I get a B.S.O.D. with the error message "A fatal exception occurred at ....." and the file involved was ESDI_506.PDR. As soon as I restarted the computer, the hard drive was unbootable.

so I took another hard drive (which I am using now), because it is bootable, AND because I think it is the w95.cih that hit the computer, I immediately changed the date before starting windows.

I have done research on the internet, and it does turn out to be the w95.cih virus, because it hits computers on the 26th of April.

Now, I am trying to recover files. Tiramisu for Dos seemed to do a good job, BUT it didn't recover the most important file to my MOM, which is a 90 page word 97 document.

So I began searching through the affected hard drive sector through sector with norton's Diskedit, and it seems that the 90 page document is divided into chunks, at different clusters.

The hard drive uses a FAT-16 filesystem, which makes FIX-CIH unusable on the hard drive.

The internet claims the first MB of the affected hard drive is overwritten with random data.

So this means I cannot access the drive using an operating system.

What could make life easier is if someone could guide me to reading a file on a FAT-16 drive when the first MB is damaged.

I am willing to write a program that can piece all the document together, but I can't unless I knew the filesystem.

and no, this drive cannot be accessed using a drive letter.

 

[Styx]

put Ubuntu on that PC, it will be secure alot faster then what you got and alot more stable and it is also secure.

 

[mstechca]

How will ubuntu retrieve a file from a FAT-16 hard drive whose first MB is damaged?

 

[akg]

i have something R-Recovery and Disk Investigator , both can recover deleted files etc, but donno abt fat16 ,try it.

How will ubuntu retrieve a file from a FAT-16 hard drive whose first MB is damaged?

NO, that was Styx's suggestion for ur new OS

 

[Thunderchild]

hm a note use antivir (sorry have to google it as I forget the web adress) its a powerful free antivirus i never had a problem

 

[kinjalgp]

Why dont you use antivirus and keep its definitions updated? I use AVG free edition available from http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 . Better be careful next time. :wink:

 

[Hero999]

What version of Windows are you using?

Styx is right installing an alternative to Windows might help to stop this from happening again but it's no good if you can't recover the one file you need. Your mum's Word 97 document is probably screwed but there're numerious programs to help you, most of them cost money though:

http://www.cimaware.com/
http://www.officerecovery.com/word/index.htm
http://www.pctools.com/file-recover/?ref=google_fr
http://www.r-tt.com/
http://www.jufsoft.com/docrepair/

Found from a Google search

It also might open in OpenOffice which I also recommend as an laternative to MS Office.

If you must use Windows then I recommend Windows 2000 , XP or Windows 2003, create two user areas, one Administrator which you only use for installing software and one limited user for general use that way a virus will have a hard time installing itself. Anti-virus and a good firewall will help but they ware no subsitute for locking your system down, also you should disable the insecure Windows services, ask me if you don't know how, backup all your important files to CD or usb stick on a regular basis.

 

[moody07747]

hmm/...viruses are no fun at all...

My younger brother set up the computers in our house and we run HS cable

i have no idea what is in our computers keeping them safe...I'm 85% sure its Norton and it will pop up now and then when it detects a virus and it will delete it automatically

we also have personal firewalls...Jetico to be exact...on all the desktops, laptops and i run Norton on my PDA all the time

we have never gotten hit by a virus and if we did my brother knows well over enough to fix the problem fast and easily

ya know he does not do computer work...is mind numbing to me because he knows so much about computers and can fix just about any problem with little time. The only thing he does not like doing is helping people and working with them because in his mind he thinks he will say whats needed and it till make little to no sense to them and he will have to explain it again and again when he could just do it himself in half the time it would take to explain it all.

but ...ill stop rambling on now...back to fixing that PC

 

[Styx]

How will ubuntu retrieve a file from a FAT-16 hard drive whose first MB is damaged?

1) using a Ubuntu liveCD will then give you alot better RAW-Access to the filesystem to allow you to attept to recover at least some data. As long as the FS was not fragmented too much a "cat /dev/hda1 | grep SOME_TAG" is the first place to start.

With pretty much every file packing a MAGIC first few 10bytes enables the likes of FILE to identy a fileformat.

There are better ways, faster ways and better tools then RAW-disk access but in the end even those tools fail and RAW is the only way to at least salvage a paragraph of a report. I have done it before but that was in the days before Ubuntu.

Ubuntu liveCD may not be the best LiveCD for the job. Pentoo is the first to come to mind .


BUT the point is

2) 98 is a shite Operating system, correction FAT-## is a shite filesystem. NTFS is actually a very good tech from MS. NTFS is better then FAT because it is journalled (ie keeps a record of what files have not been closed to allow for a recovery on a forced power-down). Likewise Linux has journalled filesystems (ext3). However DO NOT compare ext3 to NTFS (ext3 is soo much more secure and stable) or even worse ext2 to FAT-## even ext2 without it journalling was actually very robust.

IF the machine is running 98 then a Linux distro is ideal for dropping on it, if you replace it with 98 you are just asking for trouble.
The only think windows has over Linux at the moment is Games, but if you are running 98 your are stuck with DX7 games something that the stock WINE can handle no problems

 

[Hero999]

Also there isn't any decent Linux circuit simulators and converting to OpenOffice can be a problem for some people if they have to use MS Access databases, MS Project or MS Office documents containing VS script, but this only usually applies to business users.

Thanks for educating me, I'm a bit of a newb as far as Linux is concerned, I'm posting this form Ubuntu now and the one thing I've noticed is the Internet's much faster. Linux is good although it does (well Ubuntu at least) have a steeper learning curve, installing it might be easy though setting up your programs and other hardware can be troublesome.

 

[Styx]

Also there isn't any decent Linux circuit simulators and converting to OpenOffice can be a problem for some people if they have to use MS Access databases, MS Project or MS Office documents containing VS script, but this only usually applies to business users.

Thanks for educating me, I'm a bit of a newb as far as Linux is concerned, I'm posting this form Ubuntu now and the one thing I've noticed is the Internet's much faster. Linux is good although it does (well Ubuntu at least) have a steeper learning curve, installing it might be easy though setting up your programs and other hardware can be troublesome.

True on the cct simulator front. BUT just to correct
there is not native cct simulators.
You can run OrCAD via WINE and it runs fine (I do it all the time).
You can however get the likes of Matlab native as well as EAGLE native to linux

On the office front the only thing the MS-Office has over OpenOffice atm is Excel - OO-Calc is not that good (well actually the chart wizard is SHITE), Everything else is just as good - if not better. SuSe-10 have a load of new filters that convert 99% of VB to OO-VB as well as better document importing.

On the topic of ACCESS. Access is actually ONLY a front-end access (hence the name) for the free JET database that MS uses, there are plenty of Linux DB programs (can even code one in python) that can access JET, IF you wanted yr custom front-end via ACCESS though, there is a replacement that is comming along but in all onesty JET is a very poor implementation fo SQL, mySQL is by far the best database out there (as well as the pre-made access-like progs around)

Yes Linux has a "steap" learning curve, but that is not because it is hard it is because it is different. The first hands-on to Windows I had was 98 yet I have been using comps since mid 80's Use Amiga and for a while Solaris. Windows was hard, backwards, too time-consuming to do simple things, buggy,crashy and NOT multi-tasking.

 

[Hero999]

Everything else is just as good - if not better.

Writer is still missing a grammar checker and in some respects it's harder to use, just try inserting a landscape page in a document while keeping the rest as portrait, you have to mess around with styles but Word is so much easier you can just alter the page orintaion from the properties menu.

SuSe-10 have a load of new filters that convert 99% of VB to OO-VB as well as better document importing.

Isn't that Star Office not OpenOffice?

On the topic of ACCESS. Access is actually ONLY a front-end access (hence the name) for the free JET database that MS uses, there are plenty of Linux DB programs (can even code one in python) that can access JET, IF you wanted yr custom front-end via ACCESS though, there is a replacement that is comming along but in all onesty JET is a very poor implementation fo SQL, mySQL is by far the best database out there (as well as the pre-made access-like progs around)

I didn't know that but how about someone who's created a database with a nice GUI frontend containing VB code?

Yes Linux has a "steap" learning curve, but that is not because it is hard it is because it is different. The first hands-on to Windows I had was 98 yet I have been using comps since mid 80's Use Amiga and for a while Solaris. Windows was hard, backwards, too time-consuming to do simple things, buggy,crashy and NOT multi-tasking.

I agree, but only in part, it isn't just because Linux is different, it's because it takes longer to learn how to use, even if you knew nothing about computers beforehand. I've used RISC OS on Acorn computers and that was easy then there was MS-DOS which was much harder, then Windows which is easier than DOS but harder than RISC OS and now Linux which I put on a similar level as DOS as far as learning curve goes (well maybe even a bit harder as it's so much more complecated).

 

[mstechca]

I managed to get alot of the word document back. The only thing I have to redo is the formatting.

Norton's DiskEditor is great.

 

[Hero999]

Good, I'm glad you've managed to recover your mum's file. I didn't know Norton DiskEditorwas still around, how much did it set you back, was it free or did you pirate it?