fixmbr question

[Pete]

My MBR has become infected with a virus. Will running fixmbr and
fixboot against the HDD trash the existing XP installation? Will I have
to perform a complete reinstall XP afterwards?

TIA,
Pete

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[Harvey Gratt]

My MBR has become infected with a virus. Will running fixmbr and
fixboot against the HDD trash the existing XP installation? Will I have
to perform a complete reinstall XP afterwards?

TIA,
Pete

Tried Google, among the items is this link which implies it's much safer
to use an anti-virus program.

http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/vtstealth.htm

Harvey

 

[Alex Nichol]

My MBR has become infected with a virus. Will running fixmbr and
fixboot against the HDD trash the existing XP installation?

It might if it is one of the viruses that moves the dis's partition
table elsewhere, and passes requests for entries on to its own code.
Fixmbr will then leave no access to the table, and an unusable disk.

What I would do is get MBRWORK from the free downloads at
www.bootitng.com

Put it on a DOS bootable floppy, boot that and run MBRWORK

Use options
1
(so you can put things back with 2 and be no worse off)

3 then 4 to clear out the first track

There will then be A
To search the disk for signatures of partitions and build a new
Partition Table

and finally
5 to install standard MBR code

You may also need 6 to set the partition with XP as active,

 

[Pete]

It might if it is one of the viruses that moves the dis's partition
table elsewhere, and passes requests for entries on to its own code.
Fixmbr will then leave no access to the table, and an unusable disk.

What I would do is get MBRWORK from the free downloads at
www.bootitng.com

Put it on a DOS bootable floppy, boot that and run MBRWORK

Use options
1
(so you can put things back with 2 and be no worse off)

3 then 4 to clear out the first track

There will then be A
To search the disk for signatures of partitions and build a new
Partition Table

and finally
5 to install standard MBR code

You may also need 6 to set the partition with XP as active,

Thanks for the pointers. Does MBRWORK rebuild the MBR by looking at the
duplicate (back-up) copy of the partition table?

Pete


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[Alex Nichol]

Thanks for the pointers. Does MBRWORK rebuild the MBR by looking at the
duplicate (back-up) copy of the partition table?

No - it searches the disk looking for sectors having the unique
signatures for the first sectors of partitions, reads out the
specifications of it from there, and makes a new entry accordingly