Have virus, XP wont let me reformat

[usc-tommy]

I have received a trojan horse virus, (symantec says,
unrepairable) I would reformat my hard drive, but, the
system will not allow me to. I have tried to format by my
western digital disk, no luck. Tried formating with
winxp_en_pro_bf.exe, (six discs)no luck. Have even tried
to format from "dos" prompt. Still no luck. Anybody have
suggestions??????
usc-tommy
P.S. I would like to break the knee of the person who
sent this to me. I have lost everything!!!!!!!!

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Can you boot with a Win98 floppy and run fdisk to delete the partition?

Steve

 

[Axel Larson]

Boot from your XP CD and reinstall. Delete and recreate the partition if
setup will not let you reformat.

 

[Guest]

I do have a windows 98 floppy, but my hard drive has no
partition.

 

[purplehaz]

First check symantec's website as they have many tools that get rid of viri
that the auto-clean function of the program can't do. If you must format:
Boot to a win9x floppy boot disk, run Fdisk, delete partitions, create new
partitions, reboot to boot disk again, run format, (or reboot to xp cd,
format, install xp). Get boot disk here: www.bootdisk.com

 

[purplehaz]

Boot to the floppy, run fdisk, create a new partition.

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Ahhh... You cannot format because there is no partition on the drive.
Boot from the XP CD and install, it will give you partitioning choices.

Steve

 

[NobodyMan]

I do have a windows 98 floppy, but my hard drive has no
partition.

You DO have a partition or you wouldn't be able go get a trojan
(which, btw, is not a virus).

You may not have a FAT32 partion but an NTFS partion. FDISK will see
that, but as a Non-DOS partition. It will allow you to remove that
partition, though; you just have to select the Non-DOS partition and
then use the FDISK procedure to remove it.

All this is academic however. All you need to do is set your BIOS to
boot from CD, put in the XP CD, and restart. The XP install provides
you with all the tools you need.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have received a trojan horse virus, (symantec says,
unrepairable) I would reformat my hard drive, but, the
system will not allow me to. I have tried to format by my
western digital disk, no luck.

You do it as part of a reinstall of the system after booting the XP CD
direct. Enter Setup, and after the license agreement take New Install.
When it asks you to confirm where, hit ESC; select and delete the
current partition and make a new RAW one to be formatted at the next
stage

The important point is the delete. Without that it will just go ahead
and make a new install over the top of the old one