[admin]

I went into BIOS and under boot, chose to "Disable" both my c: and d: drives, so that my e: or f: cd-rom is the only device it boots from.

I'm sorry, but why did you do this? There is no need to disable the drives in BIOS. If you do that your system doesn't even know that they exist. Enable them again, boot with the Windows XP CD in the drive, and follow the black viper guide step-by-step.

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Hi Admin, sorry I dont knkow your name

Hmm, well I done that because rebooting with my xp cd in my cdrom didn't do anything. windows just booted off the hard drive all the time. i initially went in bios to change the "order" of them. but it was quite fixed. 1 and 2 were both my harddrives, only 3 was my rom, and 4 was a network thing. so, i thought the only way i can make it boot off cd, is to disable 1 + 2. that's the touble with idiots like me, start doing things to make it worse.

anyways, i'm now talking from my proper pc again! even though i done exactly the same thing time and time again, what bugged me is it kept flashing warning messages at different times, different screens, about different errors. if it was consistent then maybe i'd have given up. but as it was inconsistent, i kept trying and eventually it partioned the drive, and formated, but only when i chose (quick format) and even then many many attempts, and finally installed. windows has installed but all my programs, everything has gone which is a pain... but don't care so long as i've got rid of this nasty bug... so what next... i'm not exlcuding the fact i may have messed up doing a reinstall/format.partition, etc. so please double check my work if u can.

cheers admin... thanks for everything so far.

[The Smooth Operator]

Hi Admin, sorry I dont knkow your name

Hmm, well I done that because rebooting with my xp cd in my cdrom didn't do anything. windows just booted off the hard drive all the time. i initially went in bios to change the "order" of them. but it was quite fixed. 1 and 2 were both my harddrives, only 3 was my rom, and 4 was a network thing. so, i thought the only way i can make it boot off cd, is to disable 1 + 2. that's the touble with idiots like me, start doing things to make it worse.

anyways, i'm now talking from my proper pc again! even though i done exactly the same thing time and time again, what bugged me is it kept flashing warning messages at different times, different screens, about different errors. if it was consistent then maybe i'd have given up. but as it was inconsistent, i kept trying and eventually it partioned the drive, and formated, but only when i chose (quick format) and even then many many attempts, and finally installed. windows has installed but all my programs, everything has gone which is a pain... but don't care so long as i've got rid of this nasty bug... so what next... i'm not exlcuding the fact i may have messed up doing a reinstall/format.partition, etc. so please double check my work if u can.

cheers admin... thanks for everything so far.

[The Smooth Operator]

just an update, banafanafo said she wasn't sure if a (quick) format would do the job in getting rid of the virus. all seemed fine, until i typed in www.hijackthis.com (wrong addy by mistake), and got a pop-up window a prompt about "der.biz" and about:blank as my homepage again! doh! i recognise that der.biz was something that used to keep installing itself on my pc before dr. watson's took over.

so, i took a chance and followed the format instructions again.

i followed what you said and looked at the boot menu in BIOS. i just realised that, the + and - keys shift their order! so, kept c: drive enabled, booted of CD, and managed to do a full format, after deleting and creating the partition.

although, xp cd installed all of the windows files, it crashed on configuring for setup. so i re-booted, this time of c: drive. am i right in thinking its formatted properly? on re-booting off c: drive it mentioned having a invalid, or bad, boot.ini file, but continued. i set up xp again, and all seems fine.

i've since installed ad-aware, configured as per instructions, and AVG. AVG said i was clean, ad-aware still found a few critical bugs, but deleted them, and restarted, then only found one neglible bug.

i'd really like to see if i should do anything else, to make sure that that nasty bug u said i had has gone? fwiw, i'll post a new hjt log.

Jim.


Logfile of HijackThis v1.99.1
Scan saved at 00:20:38, on 05/04/2005
Platform: Windows XP (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 (6.00.2600.0000)

Running processes:
C:\windows\System32\smss.exe
C:\windows\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\windows\system32\services.exe
C:\windows\system32\lsass.exe
C:\windows\system32\svchost.exe
C:\windows\System32\svchost.exe
C:\windows\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\windows\Explorer.EXE
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgcc.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgemc.exe
C:\windows\System32\ctfmon.exe
C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgamsvr.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgupsvc.exe
C:\HJT\HijackThis.exe

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://www.msn.co.uk/
O3 - Toolbar: &Radio - {8E718888-423F-11D2-876E-00A0C9082467} - C:\windows\System32\msdxm.ocx
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AVG7_CC] C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgcc.exe /STARTUP
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AVG7_EMC] C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgemc.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [CTFMON.EXE] C:\windows\System32\ctfmon.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [MSMSGS] "C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe" /background
O23 - Service: AVG7 Alert Manager Server (Avg7Alrt) - GRISOFT, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgamsvr.exe
O23 - Service: AVG7 Update Service (Avg7UpdSvc) - GRISOFT, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgupsvc.exe

[admin]

Nice Work. Looks good, however you need to install all Windows critical updates, and if you haven't yet, enable the Windows firewall.