MBR Read only

[Guest]

I have a virus on the MBR of my hard drive but I am unable to delete the
partition or format MBR, it says it is read only. Does anyone have any idea
how to resolve this?

 

[Steve N.]

I have a virus on the MBR of my hard drive but I am unable to delete the
partition or format MBR, it says it is read only. Does anyone have any idea
how to resolve this?

What have you tried so far?

Steve N.

 

[Newbie]

Sandy wrote:
| I have a virus on the MBR of my hard drive but I am unable to delete the
| partition or format MBR, it says it is read only. Does anyone have any
| idea how to resolve this?

Sandy:

If you don't mind wiping the drive you can use a zero-fill utility such as
from Maxtor MaxBlast4's zero-fill utility:

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...oftware Downloads/Top Downloads&downloadID=57

The TinyURL to same website:

http://tinyurl.com/7kk3j

Use the download to create your boot floppy then boot from it. Don't let it
'setup your harddrive' for you, rather, go straight to the utilities and do
the zero-fill on your harddrive. The 'quick zero-fill' takes a couple
seconds but only does the first 63 sectors of the HDD; the 'full zero-fill'
can take at least an hour all the way to "hours and hours" on your harddrive
depending on the size of it. One of my 20GBs takes about an hour and a half,
one of my 80GBs takes about five hours etc. etc.

The Maxtor seems to work on all makes AFAICT.

 

[Guest]

I did format the drive first but the error was still there. I tried delete
partition which acted like it worked but when you viewed it was still there.
The I tried the format /mbr and it said it was read only. I thought if I but
it another PC as a slave or secondary that might work, but I didn't have one
at that location to do it.

 

[Guest]

What if it's not a maxtor, I have used zero fill on gateways before. Does it
matter what kind of drive it is.

 

[Newbie]

Sandy wrote:
| What if it's not a maxtor, I have used zero fill on gateways before.
| Does it matter what kind of drive it is.
|
| <chop chop>

Generally no, it does not make a difference. I've used the Maxtor utility
successfully on Maxtors, Western Digitals, Fujitsus, Samsungs and so on ..

What is does is fill the entire drive with zeros - like new from the factory
and unpartitioned and unformatted. During the Windows XP installation
process you tell the routine how you want the drive partitioned and
formatted and you're good to go.

 

[Guest]

sounds good I'll give it a shot

 

[Nut Cracker]

I have a virus on the MBR of my hard drive but I am unable to delete the
partition or format MBR, it says it is read only. Does anyone have any
idea
how to resolve this?

fdisk /mbr

 

[Jonny]

I have a virus on the MBR of my hard drive but I am unable to delete the
partition or format MBR, it says it is read only. Does anyone have any
idea
how to resolve this?

Generally, an image restore where the restoration of the mbr is optional and
consented for will work.