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salvage mbr win98

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by sgt_shultz

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my friends computer 1500 miles away got FORM virus. it is boot sector virus. box is NC milling machine with unknown motherboard rack mount pc ami bios 1996 v1.lownmuber. 2 3.5" floppy drives, no cd drive 10gb single ide hd.
we get 'invalid media type' when using win98 startup floppy on identical nc machine. we think we have drive parameters correct. doesn't simplest solution seem that mbr is hosed. what do you think. can we salvage by copying to anoher partition with tool such as partition magic. or are they tools you have used to fix mbr on win98 box. we tried old floppy norton utils v4.5. the ndd wants to see if it can recover the 'unknown partition' it found on a drive just the right size. it reported another partition *after* it. i think i am missing something good here but cn't see what.
we know we can fix this many ways including clone from good nc machine. we are having fun with it and guys in shop are having fun too. can you help me understand what has probaly happened here so mayube we can finesse a fix. tia

12 replies

by sgt_shultz

we tried mcfee's bootscan.exe it reported hd infected with form and 'mbr could not be repaird' can you do this 'manually' with debug?
could nortons be reporting partition as unknown because nortons too old to see fat32? do you know any tools that might recover us. can these old nortons do it and is ndd the one we want. i am easily confused in the land of nitty gritty although i realize it is almost hard to belive.

by willcomp

Sarge,

Second try at answering this question. First response went off into TR neverland.

See if I have this correct. Can't boot from Win98 startup floppy created on another PC. Can boot from NU diskette.

Try creating a startup disk on another PC. Win98, 98SE, or Me will do. Only need system files and fdisk. Head positioning on floppy drives coupled with decline in floppy disk quality presents problems reading floppies rather often nowdays.

As suggested previously, run fdisk /mbr and see if that helps. However, it probably won't remove virus.

If you can boot from a floppy, try updated version of old McAfee bootscan. See link below.

http://vil.nai.com/vil/virus-4e.asp

Have fun.

Dalton

by sgt_shultz

sorry, this does help me actually. how come i can't find fdisk /mbr? maybe my friends is ft fingering it. but i tried it from here booted from win98 startup disk and typed fdisk /mbr and 'unknown syntax' so typed fdisk /? and did not see /mbr as a switch...btw, sorry for unclear post. we CAN boot from win98 startup floppy. we can even 'kinda' boot from c drive. it boots up, flashes windows logo then stops at 'prompt' saying 'command.com not found'. and it *is* missing along with goodness knows what else. so tried to run scandisk after booting from win98 diskette and get 'invalid media' so am confused. think mbr is bad? wha a? so question is, if we can't get this fdisk /mbr thing happening, can we try something else we might be able to glom? tia. i will repost this question.

by otl

Agree with # 2, adding that if the PC is OEM be carefull of restoring partitions (some used it to set bios paramaters and contained the system repair/recovery data and tools, always these are hidden/unreported partitions on the HD).

Also would fdisk/mbr, shutdown, slave drive in another PC, virus check, then get all data off it you want to keep, to the other HD. 10G HD indicates it may be heading to the land of recycling, due to the age of the HD.

by blackcurrant

Hi

As far as I am aware this message can be caused by the following: the boot sector/partition table, FAT or directory area has become corrupted or there may be physical damage.

Is a backup of the boot sector or the FAT available which can be copied over the existing data?

If not, then Norton Utilities may be your best bet for recovering the drive.

Good luck

by sgt_shultz

think the backup copy of mbr is hosed due to inability of mcafee bootscan utility to repair it. nortons,yes. we will try it. thanks.

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