Security Issue - FAT Partition on my Hard Drive??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick Jenkins
  • Start date Start date
R

Rick Jenkins

I'm running XP Home Edition and I was hacked - found three users in
my Net Hood. They're gone and now I'm fully firewalled. But, I've
decided to wipe my drive and reload everything to be safe. I ran the
disk management console and discovered that I have two partitions of
my hard drive.

One is the c: drive, formatted in NTFS. It's about 56 Gb. When I
right click on the NTFS partition I get all of the standard choices
(open, explore, change ..., properties, help)

The other partition is what has me worried. It's only 31megs, with 26
free and it's formatted in FAT (not even FAT 32!). It has no letter
or label. When I right click on the FAT partition my only choice is
"help". Obviously there are 5 megs of stuff in this partition.

What is this partition? How am I going to delete it? How can I see
what's in it? Did the hackers leave it there? I'm worried I'll wind
up having that partition intact even after I delete the c: partition
and reload everything!

HELP!!

R. Jenkins
 
I'm running XP Home Edition and I was hacked - found three users in
my Net Hood. They're gone and now I'm fully firewalled. But, I've
decided to wipe my drive and reload everything to be safe. I ran the
disk management console and discovered that I have two partitions of
my hard drive.

One is the c: drive, formatted in NTFS. It's about 56 Gb. When I
right click on the NTFS partition I get all of the standard choices
(open, explore, change ..., properties, help)

The other partition is what has me worried. It's only 31megs, with 26
free and it's formatted in FAT (not even FAT 32!). It has no letter
or label. When I right click on the FAT partition my only choice is
"help". Obviously there are 5 megs of stuff in this partition.

What is this partition? How am I going to delete it? How can I see
what's in it? Did the hackers leave it there? I'm worried I'll wind
up having that partition intact even after I delete the c: partition
and reload everything!

HELP!!

R. Jenkins
Click to expand...
You maybe able to assign it a drive letter. If not, it may be hidden
and you'll need a tool to unhide. Then you can view the contents.
Dave
 
Did your computer come with XP pre-installed? If so, and you did not get a
recovery CD, this partition is used, with a boot disk to restore your system
to working order. Consult your computer's manual, or the manufacturer's web
site for more information on this process.
 
Thanks! That's probably it. I have a Dell.

I sent Dell an email after my initial post and, hopefully, they will
confirm what you've said.

I've become very paranoid after being hacked.
 
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