StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Okay, last night, I suffered a lockup, I reset the machine, booot....no valid OS in C:\

....

I play around with stuff, take out the overclocking, that kind of stuff, still nothing.

Pop in a windows CD to see whats going on.

the Windows partition is recognised as a partition and as a windows install by the recovery console, but the windows installer won't let me treat it as a valid windows XP partition!

Now i can suffer that loss, it's 3GB of pictures, but I can do that.

The problem is the second drive, which is a 300GB diamondmax10.

That has suffered a complete loss of it's entire partition table data. Thats roughly 100GB of music, movies, downloads, etc. GONE.

Help?!

EDIT title.

edit title again

What anti-virus software are you running?

The old PC was running AVG licensed single edition, that would not be cause of crash.

Stuff running at time of crash was Opera with 15 tabs, Trillian with 3 tabs, and Americas army 2.7 TRYING to load.

I suspect the latter killed the PC, loading a 2.7GB file.

You probably have a virus. Any way you could make a linux live cd?

Virus from what fucking source? There are zero uncontrolled entries.

I'm in the stages of getting a Knoppix Live CD, since the old PC only has a CD writer and not a DVD one.


On virus, what the hell? AVG was running without a single bleep, and I DLed AA from a good source.

There's no other explaination for how the partition table for a non-boot drive could be eraised. Anti-virus software only protects against known viruses. You'll know more once you get the live cd running on the computer. DO NOT unplug the harddrive and put it in another computer, as this may spread the virus, fucking up another computer.

No worries on that count. I'm still quite disturbed by the idea this could be a simple bog standard fucking virus, when the AVG updated itself the same day, and other then AA, simply NOTHING was being DLed.

Christ. This happened once before, but that was my own fuckup, and I had XP running and partition magic recovering stuff.

Fuck fuck fuck. Right now the old PC is not getting touched untill I get a plan together to save files from the main partition, dumping it either on a locked down games partition/ CDs.

Worms can spread over networks, what does your home network look like? was the computer even connected to one? What Anti-virus software are your other computers running?

The other PC is safe, quite safe.

For the past 48 hours it was connected once to the broken PC, that was for 5 minutes to tranfare a flash file for my mother. Besides that, it stands alone, practicly empty waiting for us to get a router.

Log on to AIM.

I need to go to bed. Here is what happened in chat:

[02:34:02] ace1pace1: on AIm express...
[02:34:14] Dominous Atheos: Which computer sent the file?
[02:35:05] ace1pace1: new PC sent to old PC, I'm willing to get an updated version of AVG to scan the file/delete it but it's a flash file that me, my mother, half the freaking family uses. Hasn't given anyone any issue
[02:35:22] Dominous Atheos: When did you send it?
[02:35:39] Dominous Atheos: And did teh new one or the old one break?
[02:35:44] ace1pace1: the new one
[02:36:25] Dominous Atheos: You sent a file from a virus infected computer to a different one, and you'e not worried?!?!
[02:36:29] ace1pace1: yesterday, 6PM.
[02:36:41] ace1pace1: flash file deleted
[02:37:12] Dominous Atheos: How many hours was the new computer on today?
[02:37:32] Dominous Atheos: And did it get on to the internet at all?
[02:37:44] ace1pace1: the new computer today was on for MAYBE 15 minutes in two stages. one was attempted windows reinstall, from windows CD. Failed. The other stage was booting into Live Unbuntu
[02:37:59] ace1pace1: I CAN'T get on the internet from new PC, it's dead, dead, dead.
[02:38:12] Dominous Atheos: I mean before it crashed
[02:38:58] ace1pace1: oh, quite a while, lets see, restart probebly sometimes thursday evening, from then on, ran straight till the crash. Files Dled during that time include Plasma Pong, that flash game, and Americas army
[02:39:30] Dominous Atheos: Where did you download the files from?
[02:40:23] ace1pace1: Plasma pong from its official site(plasma pong), the flash file I took from IE7 cache folder, orgin is Walla, israeli hub site. Americas army was DLed from...a nameless mirror, arrived to it from the Army website, so I assume it's safe
[02:40:56] Dominous Atheos: How trustworthy is the Wall site?
[02:41:01] Dominous Atheos: Walla
[02:41:10] ace1pace1: very, used by practicly every israeli once a day
[02:41:40] Dominous Atheos: What exactly is it?
[02:42:32] ace1pace1: the website? It's a hub site, similar to MSN. News, games, email, etc.
[02:43:10] Dominous Atheos: Any other downloads?
[02:43:58] ace1pace1: not that I can remember, no windows updates, nothing handled critical files(I monitor such things), uh.... no other DLs. No new music from friends, uh... nothing.
[02:44:35] ace1pace1: I'm going to do a quick restart to get a windows update out of the way

Maybe someone else can solve your problem. Just use the live cd, and tell us if it sees any files on any computer. (I assume it has NTFS read abilty)

On the virus issue, relying on a single piece of AV software to guard your computer is almost but not quite as stupid as having nothing at all. There are lots and lots of worms and viruses that even well recognized brand name AV software routinely miss and in the worst case of a badly infected computer, you're going to need up to six or seven different programs to scour them clean. At which point it's quite probable that Windows won't even be functional afterward.

I've seen computers running Norton AV or F-Secure that had over a 1000 different infections at once and it took a combination of Norman Virus Control, the installed AV program, Ad-Aware Pro, Spy Sweeper, Ewido AntiMalware and AntiVir plus some other odds and ends to get them clean. They just didn't work very well after that because the infections had reached so deep into the OS innards. In this respect, I've found the free version of AntiVir better than e.g. Norton or F-Secure, because those two routinely miss shit they should catch as a matter of course while AntiVir sees it. AntiVir also has on-access file scanning by default even in the free version and the paranoia level on that can be configured quite easily.

The setup I'm running on my computer to keep unwanted shit out is a combo of AntiVir, ZoneAlarm, Ad-Aware, Spybot and Spysweeper and I've got some other tools in reserve. Windows Defender isn't a bad addition either if one wants it. Haven't seen anything get past that cocktail yet. Shelling out for a paid version of AdAware gets you a second on-access scanning program to complement the AV software, so it could be a good idea. The Personal Edition is only good for cleaning up shit after the milk is already spilled.

If you can get the Knoppix to recognize the partition tables on the other HD, you can probably recover stuff that way, or you could try to use something like Partition Magic or other data recovery programs. Otherwise you'll be stuck with using the services of some repair shop that also does data recoveries, but that's going to cost you anywhere from 60 to 300 euros worth of money or even more depending on how difficult it is and how long it takes and assuming the hourly rates over there are similar to what they are here.

Edi

Edi wrote:
If you can get the Knoppix to recognize the partition tables on the other HD, you can probably recover stuff that way, or you could try to use something like Partition Magic or other data recovery programs. Otherwise you'll be stuck with using the services of some repair shop that also does data recoveries, but that's going to cost you anywhere from 60 to 300 euros worth of money or even more depending on how difficult it is and how long it takes and assuming the hourly rates over there are similar to what they are here.

Edi

I'm booting Knoppix now on the other machine, will update. If I can recover just the pictures from the windows partition, I can wipe it, reinstall XP and get working with Partition magic or other programs. Otherwise, it's off to a lab, I'd very much like not to lose data.

On the virus thing, don't get me wrong, I run Ad-aware, spybot, Zone alarm, etc. AVG was running fine, though I didn't know about Antivir. I'm right now thinking this was more a very bad crash rather then anything malicious.

Update: Knoppix can see Partition C and games partition. Attempting to move stuff from C to games so far is unsucessful, apprently NTFS write setting is disabled by default, have to change that. Also trying to understand how to burn a CD/DVD in Knoppix 5 CD edition(if anyone wants to help).

EDITx2: nevermind, fucking linux, fuckig OS, fucking computers.

Holy fucking shit, another try at fixmbr helped, it seems that...dosn't recognise USB mouse.

...BSOD.

Driver IRQL not less or equal.


Holy fucking shit, it can see the downloads partition, hopefully this means it will be able to see music soon.

Well, it's not seeing music, slowly seems to be recovering by itself, doing chkdsk from safemode. I'm getting quite freaked out

And apprently recovery will be fine, thanks to Sheps post in data recovery thread, that software is golden and I just need to purchese it.

I seem to have suffered the same thing yesterday as well. Booted my windows machine up and it locked up then it was giving me invalid system disk after that. Haven't bothered to try anything on it yet.

Edi wrote:On the virus issue, relying on a single piece of AV software to guard your computer is almost but not quite as stupid as having nothing at all. There are lots and lots of worms and viruses that even well recognized brand name AV software routinely miss and in the worst case of a badly infected computer, you're going to need up to six or seven different programs to scour them clean. At which point it's quite probable that Windows won't even be functional afterward.

If any operating system gets compromised the best practice is to reinstall.

I was about to nuke the site from orbit, then it suddenly fixed itself.

Lisa, I went through knoppix, apprently acessing the drive in that fashion made the windows recovery console remember that it's broken and suddenly approve a fixmbr.

I'm going to probably pull the drive, yank any thing of value off it by usb on my mac and then see if the the drive needs replacing (it's 5 or 6 years old)

Just knoppix it? I'm now recovering my files. Fucking eurotrip pop music survived and The beatles didn't.

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why it happened, or how it fixed itself.

Uraniun235 wrote:If any operating system gets compromised the best practice is to reinstall.

Yes, it is. Depends on the infection though. If yoiu have a couple of minor malware programs, they are fairly easy to deal with. When there is massive infection, it's not worth the effort so nuking and reinstalling is the only practical way to go. But I'm talking from experience when I say that a cleaned Windows might be broken beyond repair after a serious infestation. Bust sometimes data recovery concerns or other concerns prevent that option from being used.

Edi