knightwriter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I ran a scandisk and the error "This drives boot area contains important information that is damaged or invalid. This can cause windows to report the drives free space incorrectly or slowly. Scandisk repairs the boot are by recording the correct values in this area." I wasn't sure what to do so allowed scandisk to repair the error. I could not get the online scan to go so I then downloaded the latest version of AVG 6.0 anti-virus system free program. The AVG virus program so far has said there are no viruses detected. I was running Norton 2003 virus and firewall up till a few weeks ago when it seemed to be causing more problems, so I removed the program and haven't put it back on. There have been other times in the past a message would come up and say the information in the boot area has changed. I did not write those error messages down, I know I should have, but just let it correct the error. I have been sick for the past few years and let things slide. I am now getting better so feel like trying to fix this. I was using Earthlink for 4 years at least up until 2 months ago and switched from them to KCNet, a local ISP company where we live to see if that would help. Last week I called KCNet and they said since I was being disconnected and by the message, something on the computer was disconnecting it. They said it sounds like I have a worm and that the being disconnected and running slow while online was not from their end. I have not used Microsoft Outlook 2003 for several months now either, only getting my email online now. So I have not been sure if there has been a virus from a while back never gotten rid of. I am using IE latest version and when I am offline the computer runs fine and I have no error messages. Other than the boot area information message coming up and I don't know why that is happening. The hard drive is a Maxtor 19.0 GB that is almost new. I have 256mb ram installed. The motherboard is a Soyo KY-KY7 Dragon Plus AMD Socket-A based VIA KT266A ATX that is only ! a little over 2 years old. These problems only started happening this past 6 months maybe. When I fixed the VIA PCI 10/100mb Fast Ethernet Adaptor and got rid of the yellow exclamation mark in device manager, I do not know if it is from my imagination or what, but I haven't been being disconnected as much. I can't think of any other problem. Right now I really don't know what to do and if someone else would, it would be very appreciated. Thank you, Sandy
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: FIRST, BE SURE it's a v*rus. Go here http://housecall.trendmicro.com and let it scan your HD. Be SURE you select ALL of your folders, EVERYTHING in the scan. Even though it may not be a v-irus, reformatting might be all that will fix the problems. First let us know what the results are then you can go from there. --------- There was no point in going through steps to reformat if you don't need to reformat. That would be a last resort. It would also depend on if you are infected or not. That's why I said to let us know what the scan showed. Since you can't run the scan, then update your AV software again now (there were 2+ updates for most AV programs in 2 days) and scan everything on your HD. The easiest and fastest way to reformat is to use the HD manufacturer's utility & boot from it. But you don't want to use that if you're infected with a boot v-irus. There is usually a "write zeros to drive" on the floppy, but I'm not sure if that will fix a potential boot sector v-irus. The best way is to let your AV software fix it. If it cannot, then sometimes a LLF (low level format) must be done as a last resort, but I'd try Fdisk first. A LLF can sometimes destroy info the manufacturer places on the HD for ID purposes. All this is moot if you don't have a v-irus. If you just want to reformat anyway, then OK. But there are other things you can try to possibly fix any problems you may have if a virus is not involved that you should try first. I had a similar problem at the Housecall site that I posted about a couple of weeks back. I found out it was one of my HD's that was doing it. The scan would not finish, or lockup, or the PC would restart by itself! The PC would also restart when I tried to do a scan with my native AV software! I narrowed it down to my 2nd HD (the one for storage) and some folders I had hidden with "HideXP" or something like that....OR, a HUGE folder that was about 800mb in size. I believe I decided it was the large folder that was doing it because it will scan OK now with HideXP still in use. Since the scan won't even start in your case, it could be more of a true HD problem and not just a specific corrupted folder. Run scandisk, then try the scan again. -Clint God Bless Us All Clint Hamilton, Owner Want to exchange links with us? http://OrpheusComputing.com ) ----- Original Message ----- From: "knightwriter" I have went here http://housecall.trendmicro.com many times and the scan will not start. Has anyone else had this problem or is it just me. Thank you, Sandy I didn't get a answer yet probably because I wasn't very clear. What is the best and most complete way to format a hard drive. That will erase all files and vi***s if they are there. I'd do the fdisk command but wanted to make sure first what was the safest way. I'll then reinstall win98 second edition. Thank you again, Sandy ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
