Re: What virus is this?

**Sunni** wrote:
My son's AVG detected a virus that, according to the virus checker,
could be healed. He clicked to heal it. He then rebooted, which
he discovered could not be done. His WinXP OS is gone, his program
files all disappeared, his data totally disappeared.

This morning, I received a call from a friend in Seattle who told me
his computer has been down. He had the identical problem. He runs
Norton.

Both are running XP. My friend, my son and I use Instant
Messaging a lot. My friend uses DSL. My son and I use Clearwire
wireless, which uses a purchased radio frequency. Our two
standalone PCs are hardwired into a router.

None of us use Windows Outlook, Outlook Express. My friend uses
Microsoft Outlook. We use Firefox and Pegasus and GMail.

I am still using Windows 98. All of us keep our computers
up-to-date with patches. All anti-virus software is kept
up-to-date. I am the only one that doesn't have it, thankfully.
But today, I'm backing up important files to my second hard drive.

What in the heck is this viirus, worm, trojan or ????? Anybody
know how it got into their system and what to do to protect against
it?

I seriously doubt "everything is gone". Although it would be possible to
write something to (maybe - but doubtful) erase the partition table on
reboot or something - it would require interaction from the user and
ignoring warnings and all sorts of things.

Have you booted with yor Windows XP CD and performed a repair install?

Used something like the "Ultimate Boot CD" to see if the data is actually
there?

From what I see - you cannot boot (you said the Windows XP OS is gone) but
then you state that all the rest is gone to - so - I have to ask - does it
boot? Is just the files/folders on their desktop different?

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


.

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