Virus wiped my desktop

Now it would not even want to reinstall Vista and I get a message saying that my hard disk is dammaged. In my opinion it is not worth the trouble of trying to clean them off both time wise and also you can never be completely sure that they have been totally eradicated. So instead invest in an external hard drive, they are really affordable now and can serve more than one purpose [storing films or a music library for instance] Next download a Disk Imaging programme.

There are great free ones available. I use Macrium Reflect Free version which is very easy to use and reliable. Make a disk image on to the external as a fall back.

This will include everything on your PC. Then make a backup on your documents and music etcetera although you have already got this in your full disk image. This documents back up is done by copying to your external and not via the Disk Image programme.

Now you have the fall back use your rescue CD or Windows disk to reinstall your system to when you bought it. Depending on your disk you may have to reinstall drivers as well so make sure you have that sorted. Now comes the painful bit. You will need to reinstall all your programmes from the web or any disks you may have.

You will also need to visit the Microsoft Updates site to bring all software up to date. This can entail several visits and a lot of time depending how old your PC is.

Next replace your documents from the external to your PC. At this stage I usually run CCleaner to get rid of rubbish but that is just my preferance. We can date this and it is your day one image. It is better than your manufacturers CD because it is up to date and contains your present programmes. You can delete the initial Disk image if you wish as that is of your old system.

Now you can use your PC and if you get an infection just restore from your external. In order to keep up to date I make a note of any changes I make to my system and a keep this on a notepad document in My Documents.

After say a month I will put the previous Disk Image on after moving that note pad document to the external along with any other updated files. When the month old disk image is in place I will apply all the changes I made in that month[with the help of the word pad ] update my security products and then take another disk image for use a month down the line.

This way I believe I minimise software rot and I always have a recent clean disk image to fall back on. Yes, it does entail some work but it gives great peace of mind. Never again will you be left with vital System 32 files in quarantine and wondering what to do!

I have a Sony Viao with Windows xp prof, and a few months ago my wife downloaded a update, so she thought, for Adobe Flashplayer Well I have lost all my configurations, accounts and I couldnt even run a scan. I tried to fix it by repairing and the computer will function like its supposed to for min afterward, then it blinks and all my configurations and functions are gone again. Do I need to start all over?

I have my recovery disk for windows but do not have one for the drivers. Also if I can back anything up can the virus hide in anything I do and reappear? Thankyou for any help you can give me, this has been a real pain!!!!!

I had a virus on my computer similar to the one mentioned. It told me my disc was damaged and the usual give us your Card details and we will fix it! The screen was black and very little worked it seemed all was lost. Then I remembered the computer was split into family names I went on my sons name and Started Ad aware and Windows Defender they both found malaware and deleted it a restart was required. On restarting I went for a systems restore to a previous week. It worked wonders the Virus has now gone and all things on my own name are working.

Lucky I had two users on the machine or it would have been hard work knowing what to do. I received an E mail from a known sender which contained a link to what I thought was a website to look a wedding pictures. I have access to internet explorer,but I lost all of other programs and my hard drive is damaged. The computer is about 6 years old. Can a hard drive be fixed or is some damage beyound repair?

How did this happen? How did I get a fake e mail? I had no idea it was not from the known sender. However Yahoo filters them into the spam folder where I can look at them without opening them. Better safe than sorry. Only download from trusted sources and even then scan it with a good virus scanner. I use Norton Insight! I think I have a bad virus. A few days ago I was at Facebook. Yesterday my hard drive started failing and it would not allow me to reinstall Win XP and gave a message that it was unable to format my hard drive.

I have two copies of Win XP and neither worked. A failure may be imminent. I have read that I should be using a password on my hard drive and will do that in the future. Computer viruses are software code designed to spread to computer files and other computers, delete files, and cause other problems with the data on the computer. That being said, it is possible that a virus could corrupt data on the computer including the software drivers that are used to allow your hardware devices to communicate with the computer.

If this were to occur it may prevent the device from working but would not physically damage the hardware. You may also want to try to reinstall the drivers. Posted by: Eli Marcus 29 Oct Thank you Bob for reinforcing this. If only I knew then what I know today I was the victim of the deadly Chernobyl CIH virus back in the year Someone handed me a software CD with various software installation packages, and when I activated one of them, the whole system went dead in about 30 seconds.

I understood after a while that the BIOS on my PC was corrupted, but I don't recall now if I was prescient enough to salvage the hard drive and format it for later reuse. Speaking of viruses, I have a small tip I can offer - A couple of years ago, I tried to clean up a virus riddled PC at work, and found that any software I tried to use was blocked by the viruses, and access to the internet was limited basically to news sites, but I couldn't access any antivirus or anti malware sites It dawned on me to try using some portable apps I had on a USB drive, and lo and behold, it worked!

I had to use a few of them one after the other to get a thorough cleaning, but the viruses on the PC apparently didn't identify the portable apps, so it worked quite nicely!

Posted by: bobd 29 Oct When I wrote in a Microsoft forum that my attempt to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 bricked my motherboard, the expected cadre of ignorati claimed that was impossible. I've never seen that. Posted by: Jdavis 29 Oct Not a hard drive, but as the Iranians about the centrifuges in their reactors that the USA and Israel attacked with a virus -- spun themselves to death.

Posted by: RandiO 29 Oct A PC tech telling an innocent customer that a virus was the DOA of a disk drive really is not such a bad thing; as this little white lie simply provides a means for the customer to be more aware of this thing called a virus.

Posted by: John 30 Oct I know this is not a Windows computer, but I in the early Y2K I remember reading about DirecTV sending a signal down that intentionally destroyed circuits actually burned in the DirecTV receivers that contained hacked smart cards. I think we all know about Apple bricking all the iPhones that were repaired by unauthorized dealers. Apple lost a class action suit in doing so. I am not sure if the phones had physical damage or not, but were not repairable and had to be replaced.

Posted by: Charles 30 Oct Posted by: Jene 30 Oct In the very, very early days of the PC, there were a couple of hardware weaknesses that could be used to produce physical damage. These have been fixed. A program loop that moves the disk access arm rapidly to the extremes could cause the alignment to be damaged. The original monochrome display could be burned out if the sweep circuit in the monochrome adapter were turned off, leaving direct current across the deflection coils.

These vulnerabilities were fixed long ago. Posted by: BaliRob 30 Oct I concur with Bob's assertion that a Virus cannot damage a HD. Those that read this column will remember me bleating on about MS and its dangerous Updates causing havoc and causing problems for BOTH August and September - the second of which made it totally unable to get at the BIOS or System Restore and having been observed at switch-on trying to instal past Locked Screen without success. I still do not have the courage to allow the October 'roll-up' to touch my machine which also was issued for the Defender problem not known about.

But only having unpaid support volunteers available to us - it is impossible to speak to any Firefox technician for an opinion and repair. Posted by: Michael Scholl 30 Oct There are people who use the term "hard dtive" to describe their desktop computers. Posted by: dbaSteve 31 Oct I had the flu and was so sick I wasn't thinking clearly.

During the worst of my illness, I was working on my PC. Because I was sick, I dropped the hard drive and it broke. In this case, a flu virus destroyed my hard drive. Posted by: BaliRob 01 Nov Thus no Language Pack needs to be incded in Add-Ons. Posted by: John 21 Jul Computer viruses most certainly can and do destroy hard drives. If you use more than one antivirus or antispyware program at the same time, your PC may experience decreased performance, become unstable, or restart unexpectedly. Caution: When you remove your currently installed Internet security programs, your PC is in an unprotected state.

If you haven't installed another antimalware program make sure that Microsoft Defender Antivirus is enabled, and that Windows Firewall is turned on. Note: Some security software may not uninstall completely. If you're unable to fully uninstall an app, go to the publisher's website or contact their technical support line for help. Windows 10 Windows 8. More isn't always better Running multiple anti-malware apps at the same time can cause your system to be slow or unstable.

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