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#1
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Strange disappearance (at least to me)
Howdy: I have a three year old computer that I built for a neighbor
lady running Windows XP SP3. She called yesterday and said that it would not boot and kept saying that it could not find the hal.dll file. I went over and tried to reinstall it using the Windows CD and Repair Console. No joy. I then took the unit home and pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to my 'puter and there were not ANY Windows or system files/folders to be found on this hard drive! The only thing on the hard drive was a storage folder of pictures, the Programs Files and one or two junk folders. She claims she did nothing but let it go into sleep mode and then try and bring it out the next day. I believe her, Marie doesn't mess with the computer at all, she just calls me. Is there some virus, trojan, worm that I have not heard about that can do this to a machine?? I wiped the hard drive and ran some tests on it and it seems fine. At least good enough shape not to make Windows completely disappear!! I'm completely reinstalling all OS and software now, but sure would like to know what the hell happened. I am open to any suggestions, please! Any more info needed, just let me know. -- The Seabat |
#2
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Strange disappearance (at least to me)
The Seabat wrote:
Howdy: I have a three year old computer that I built for a neighbor lady running Windows XP SP3. She called yesterday and said that it would not boot and kept saying that it could not find the hal.dll file. I went over and tried to reinstall it using the Windows CD and Repair Console. No joy. I then took the unit home and pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to my 'puter and there were not ANY Windows or system files/folders to be found on this hard drive! The only thing on the hard drive was a storage folder of pictures, the Programs Files and one or two junk folders. She claims she did nothing but let it go into sleep mode and then try and bring it out the next day. I believe her, Marie doesn't mess with the computer at all, she just calls me. Is there some virus, trojan, worm that I have not heard about that can do this to a machine?? I wiped the hard drive and ran some tests on it and it seems fine. At least good enough shape not to make Windows completely disappear!! I'm completely reinstalling all OS and software now, but sure would like to know what the hell happened. I am open to any suggestions, please! Any more info needed, just let me know. Some malware now, sets some kind of hidden attribute on a number of files. This prompted someone ("Grinler") to write "unhide.exe" to fix it. But it sounds like what you're seeing, is a bit more extensive than that kind of damage. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html You could try booting a Linux LiveCD (Ubuntu 10.04LTS or 10.10). Linux can mount NTFS or FAT32 partitions, and tends to ignore attributes, so that everything is visible. That's another way to look at the drive, while it's slaved to your computer. See if the Windows directory is present under Linux. There is an offline scanner on the Kaspersky site, that you can use before the drive is brought over to your computer. I use this occasionally on my system. It has a Linux OS that it uses, but the scan looks for Windows malware. It will download virus definition updates, if it can establish a network connection via DHCP. (196MB CD) http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208282163 You can run CHKDSK on the drive's partitions, but I wouldn't do that unless I had a backup image of the drive first. If you use Linux "dd" (or any other backup program with sector-by-sector capability), you can preserve any damaged beyond recognition file systems, until you fix it. That way, if running CHKDSK makes it worse, you restore from backup and try again. I consider CHKDSK to be a double edged sword, because it can do as much damage as it can fix. If for any reason the hardware is flaky (hard drive cable loose), CHKDSK can wreck the file system. ******* Since you've already fixed the problem, before returning the computer to Marie, run a disk diagnostic. Seagate has Seatools for example. Western Digital has a tool for their disks. In the case of Seatools, be a little careful with the Windows version. I had the Seatools utility erase the firmware on my USB drive enclosure (Cypress chip based USB controller). I managed to put it back easy enough, but it's just better to disconnect a USB drive before running a diagnostic on an internal Seagate hard drive on the computer, just in case. Other brands of USB enclosure chips are likely not affected. The Seagate DOS version won't do that, but on the other hand, you may have problems getting their FreeDOS based version to boot. It's possible it doesn't support enough chipsets, in terms of drivers. If you can get one of those diagnostics to run, it's worth it. A weaker alternative is to run the free version of HDTune (2.55) and examine the SMART statistics page for worrying signs. If the disk isn't healthy, that may line up with your non-virus theory of where the files went. Reallocated Sector Count Current Pending Sector HTH, Paul |
#3
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Strange disappearance (at least to me)
On 1/5/2012 12:12 PM, The Seabat wrote:
Howdy: I have a three year old computer that I built for a neighbor lady running Windows XP SP3. She called yesterday and said that it would not boot and kept saying that it could not find the hal.dll file. I went over and tried to reinstall it using the Windows CD and Repair Console. No joy. I then took the unit home and pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to my 'puter and there were not ANY Windows or system files/folders to be found on this hard drive! The only thing on the hard drive was a storage folder of pictures, the Programs Files and one or two junk folders. She claims she did nothing but let it go into sleep mode and then try and bring it out the next day. I believe her, Marie doesn't mess with the computer at all, she just calls me. Is there some virus, trojan, worm that I have not heard about that can do this to a machine?? I wiped the hard drive and ran some tests on it and it seems fine. At least good enough shape not to make Windows completely disappear!! I'm completely reinstalling all OS and software now, but sure would like to know what the hell happened. I am open to any suggestions, please! Any more info needed, just let me know. Unfortunately, it is ridiculously easy to make a simple piece of malware to do just that. Youtube is loaded with free tutorials. You need to teach your neighbor to pay attention to the extensions on files sent to her via email, or downloaded from the web. The simplest malware just use .bat and .exe files that have to be started by the user. Not saying this is definitely what happened, but the knowledge is important for everyone regardless. |
#4
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Strange disappearance (at least to me)
On Jan 5, 12:12 pm, The Seabat wrote:
Howdy: I have a three year old computer that I built for a neighbor lady running Windows XP SP3. She called yesterday and said that it would not boot and kept saying that it could not find the hal.dll file. I went over and tried to reinstall it using the Windows CD and Repair Console. No joy. I then took the unit home and pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to my 'puter and there were not ANY Windows or system files/folders to be found on this hard drive! The only thing on the hard drive was a storage folder of pictures, the Programs Files and one or two junk folders. She claims she did nothing but let it go into sleep mode and then try and bring it out the next day. I believe her, Marie doesn't mess with the computer at all, she just calls me. Is there some virus, trojan, worm that I have not heard about that can do this to a machine?? I wiped the hard drive and ran some tests on it and it seems fine. At least good enough shape not to make Windows completely disappear!! I'm completely reinstalling all OS and software now, but sure would like to know what the hell happened. I am open to any suggestions, please! Any more info needed, just let me know. -- The Seabat I did that yesterday from another drive, completely wiped the C: drive off and reinstalled the OS. It took me all of one hundred and five seconds. What the hell happened is exactly the point of who the hell needs to cares with a binary backup. Hell, do it whenever for a matter of principle. With other people I've "helped," I hid the partition where I put the binary image from them first, or put it on other storage media. All kinds of things "happen" to them, they say, telling me some thing or another not near so nicely as dear, sweet Maria. Save it, I say, for the restoration. You can tell me all about it when I'm headed sideways out the door. |
#5
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Strange disappearance (at least to me)
On Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:12:18 -0600, The Seabat
had a flock of green cheek conures squawk out: Howdy: I have a three year old computer that I built for a neighbor lady running Windows XP SP3. She called yesterday and said that it would not boot and kept saying that it could not find the hal.dll file. I went over and tried to reinstall it using the Windows CD and Repair Console. No joy. I then took the unit home and pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to my 'puter and there were not ANY Windows or system files/folders to be found on this hard drive! The only thing on the hard drive was a storage folder of pictures, the Programs Files and one or two junk folders. She claims she did nothing but let it go into sleep mode and then try and bring it out the next day. I believe her, Marie doesn't mess with the computer at all, she just calls me. Is there some virus, trojan, worm that I have not heard about that can do this to a machine?? I wiped the hard drive and ran some tests on it and it seems fine. At least good enough shape not to make Windows completely disappear!! I'm completely reinstalling all OS and software now, but sure would like to know what the hell happened. I am open to any suggestions, please! Any more info needed, just let me know. I had XP crash one time and the windows directory was gone after the reset. No virii or trojans were involved. -- Stephen "The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." --Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst. |
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