formatting, being denied

[quiksilverx181]

hey guys, im trying really hard to format right now, but my computers not having it. I got a really nasty virus that kept closing firefox and intenret explorer, while not letting me access some things like program files. So i restart, and im trying to format, but now what its doing is it says its searching for my hard drive, and looks up my mac address, and says nothing can be found, then it quickly skips (flashes, really) the boot from CD warning, and boots back into windows. Wierdest thing ever. I can access bios *sometimes*, but i need to get this thing formatted. What can i do? BTW its Windows XP Pro, with an AMD 64 3000, Abit mobo, 80gb IDE and 120gb SATA HD's (only windows is on the 80gb, and i detached my 120gb since it was refusing to post with that in there).

Oh btw, now its refusing to post at all now. I turn on the comp, nothing shows up on the monitor.

edit: its posting now after i reset the bios again, but it still wont let me boot off cd....

 

[Farva]

Have you tried a different CD-ROM? A different IDE cable? Have you tried GParted to reformat your drive to FAT32 and then using the Windows install to format it to NTFS (I had this problem not too long ago where I couldn't use GParted to format my disk to NTFS, I had to format to FAT32 and then let Windows format the disk to NTFS).

 

[CommanderFrank]

If your computer has a floppy drive, download the low level formatting utility software from the HDD manufacturer. Restart the machine with the floppy as 1st boot and follow the format instructions. This will completely wipe the drive including the MBR and any virus lurking there. Nice fresh clean machine

 

[bbz_Ghost]

When you reset the BIOS, most mobos default to booting off floppy then hard drive then CD/DVD so you might have to reset the boot order in the BIOS to get the boot ability from CD/DVD back.

Unless the "virus" was something that specifically targetted the BIOS itself (CMOS viruses were really popular long ago but are incredibly rare these days, they just don't work properly anymore), I can't imagine how any virus would be having any effect on the hardware that way. I'd suspect a mobo about to crap out and die personally before I'd ever suspect a virus capable of such things.

The suggestion for GParted was a good one, or trying a different XP CD is valid also. If for some strange reason you simply never get the ability to boot off the CD/DVD drive again, then obviously there's a hardware failure someplace, be it the optical drive, the BIOS, the mobo, etc. This stuff is so difficult to troubleshoot, especially since none of us are there with our hands on the actual equipment.

Good luck, regardless...

 

[OldMX]

I got the same issue a couple of years ago on a client's computer, who said he had never been infected and antivirus was for ppl who download stuff from tijuana and surf pron sites, his computer was infected up to bios levels, ended backing up all the stuff, reflashing board with latest .rom, booting off to DBAN, wiping clean the hard disk and reinstall everything.

Yes it was a lot of work but it was worth, and he sure learned his lesson