Partition limiting virus, or bad HD?

[McTrack]

I am working on a PC that had been munged by multiple virii. I'm
trying to do a fresh install of XP, but running into a snag at the
partitioning stage. It has a 300 gig Western Digital HD on it, but
whenever I create a partition larger than 8 gig, the resulting
installation won't boot (it had larger partitions before the virii) -
although XP doesn't complain at all during the partition
creation/format/install process.

I have tried several aftermarket partition managing tools but I get the
same result - nothing above 8 gigs produces a good install. I DLed
WD's Data Lifeguard, but whenever I boot from the floppy it creates, it
says there is some sort of problem with the archive that needs
pkzipfix(but then it seems to be using Caldera's DR DOS and I've had
poor luck with that in the past).

Is it even possible that a virus could have done this, or I am looking
at a dead HD that coincidently failed at the same time as being hit by
a virus? Or maybe something else entirely?

In 20+ years of building/fixing PCs, I've never seen anything quite
like this.

 

[Eric]

Have a look at the drive with WinHex -

http://www.x-ways.net/winhex/

Eric,
PC Buyer Beware!
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/

 

[paulmd]

I am working on a PC that had been munged by multiple virii. I'm
trying to do a fresh install of XP, but running into a snag at the
partitioning stage. It has a 300 gig Western Digital HD on it, but
whenever I create a partition larger than 8 gig, the resulting
installation won't boot (it had larger partitions before the virii) -
although XP doesn't complain at all during the partition
creation/format/install process.

I have tried several aftermarket partition managing tools but I get the
same result - nothing above 8 gigs produces a good install. I DLed
WD's Data Lifeguard, but whenever I boot from the floppy it creates, it
says there is some sort of problem with the archive that needs
pkzipfix(but then it seems to be using Caldera's DR DOS and I've had
poor luck with that in the past).

Is it even possible that a virus could have done this, or I am looking
at a dead HD that coincidently failed at the same time as being hit by
a virus? Or maybe something else entirely?

How abour RAM? Get a copy of Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org.

Could be you blamed a virus for the symptoms caused by a failing hard
drive.

 

[McTrack]

Finally figured it out! One of the virii had corrupted the BIOS - when
I re-flashed the BIOS, everything went fine.

 

[paulmd]

Finally figured it out! One of the virii had corrupted the BIOS - when
I re-flashed the BIOS, everything went fine.

A Bona-fide BIOS virus? That's rare.