Well, I guess I sure learned my lesson. No matter how well protected you think you are, viruses have a way of exploiting the teeniest opening.

After being "bitten" once several months ago, I found this site and you people helped me get it all straightened out. I thought I had my computer protected well enough...

I have the latest version of Norton AntiVirus 2005 (with the latest updates) running, I use Spybot and Adaware monthly to check for spyware, but somehow, my computer got zapped. The most likely source is through Internet Explorer. (BTW, I'm using my wife's computer now).

My computer was acting up lately and I'd been meaning to give it a through virus scan (that is usually best run overnight while I sleep). But I never got the chance. Last night, while working on some HTML code for a website, it took a dive big time.

When I first turned it on, it was responding very slowly. I took this as a sign that my anti-spyware software needed to be run. I did that and I found some innocuous entries which I deleted.

Later, in the middle of copying some data from a CD, I started to get some error messages saying that data being written to my hard drive was not being saved. After that, it started to slow to the point of taking forever. Then the dreaded "blue screen of death" showed up. The message beings with some hexadecimal memory locations then the text that reads "inaccessible_boot_device" and tells me to restart my computer. But after I reboot, this same message keep coming up.

What burns me is that I had the latest updates to Norton Antivirus loaded and made sure to have all the security options enabled.

Now I need to be able to scan the hard drive to determine if it is indeed a virus, and not a controller failure. But I can't use my Norton AV resource disks since I never made them in the first place! (Yeah,...I know. I'm a numb-skull)

Does anyone here know a way that I can make an antiviral boot disk without having access to my Win2000 computer? My other option is to go into work and make a boot disk at a computer that has Windows 2000. Then I'll need to get some other type of antivirus program to inoculate my computer. This is going to be a bear since most antiviral programs I know of (McAfee and Norton) need to be run from a hard drive. Unless they have a stripped down version that can fit on a 3 1/2 floppy....

Any help here?

Well sounds like big trouble alright.


Here are a couple of suggestions that might help some.

You could also burn to disk firefox browser and bring to your computer from an uninfected computer

Firefox download page:---www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/



Can you download a couple of scanners to an uninfected computer and then burn to disk and bring to your computer and run them normal or safe mode.


Get the stinger here:
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

Download it to another computer if need be, and bring it to the affected computer on floppy disk.

It will kill the top 53 virus files if any are found there



Please download, install, update and scan your system with the free version of Ewido trojan scanner: www.ewido.net/en/download/

1. When installing, under "Additional Options" uncheck "Install background guard" and "Install scan via context menu".

2. When you run ewido for the first time, you will get a warning "Database could not be found!". Click OK. We will fix this in a moment.

3. From the main ewido screen, click on UPDATE in the left menu, then click the Start update button.

4. After the update finishes (the status bar at the bottom will display "Update successful"), click on the Scanner button in the left menu, then click on the Start button. This scan can take quite a while to run.


5. If ewido finds anything, it will pop up a notification. You can select "clean" and check the boxes "Perform action with all infections" and "Create encrypted backup" before clicking on OK.


6. When the scan finishes, click on "Save Report". This will create a text file. Please then paste the contents of the text file to this thread, along with a new HijackThis log.


Make sure you are set to normal startup. Click Start -> Run -> Type Msconfig -> Press Enter -> make sure Startup is set to Normal.

If you can do the scan post the log it makes if possible.


Also:

You can burn to disk Hijackthis and bring to your computer on disk and post a HJT log hopefully.


Also


Open Hijackthis.

Click the "Open the Misc Tools" section Button.

Click the "Open Uninstall Manager" Button.

Click the "Save list..." Button.

Save it to your desktop. Copy and paste the contents into your reply.


Hope this helps, let us know

Thanks for the tips on Firefox, Stinger, et al. I have downloaded them to this computer.

Unfortunately, I cannot even get my "infected" computer to boot even in safe mode. I believe that the hard drive may have been corrupted. Before I assume this is the case, I will attempt to access it again.

Perhaps if I use another windows 2000 computer to make a bootable CDROM I can get in. At that point I can try to use Stinger to scan the drive, and HiJack this to get a snap shot of the Registry.

<sigh> I was thinking about buying a new hard drive anyway. But was hoping that I wouldn't have to do a complete re-install of the OS.

Thanks again for the help.