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PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/23/2011 6:46:28 AM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		Someone here once said that the fact that I call my sister my sinister was telling in some way. I accepted that, OK.

Her PC is on my bench now. She's a gamer, so I am not going to bother removing 61,809 virii, I'm just going to reload the OS. We got some extra harddrives, so I am going to load a lil 10 gig for it, clone it to the 80 gig and leave the ten unplugged, chaste - in a manner of speaking. There is an extra 250 gig in there for data, Next time she fucks it up I'll just walk her thropugh recloning the ten to the eighty.

This machine was state of the art a few years ago. P4, TV card, remote control, the works.

It was bad enough that the cursor would move itself, I guess making a Ouija board obsolete. I tracked that down to the video card, as it has the inferface for the remote. Yes, you can surf the net on your TV from the couch using the remote control. Well, it may be time for a new vidcard and that feature might be gone. Let's face it, the cursor is not supposed to move when you tap on the vidcard. But that's not the ghost.

For some reason the new OS did not take on the ten giger. Shit happens - whatever. However without a bootable drive it still booted, into DOS. Had the A prompt and everything. I typed DIR and it sure looks like a DOS boot disk. All the usual shit is there, an AUTOEXEC.BAT and everything.

Now get this. There is no disk in drive A:. Now you got me interested here so I disconnected the floppy drive. Sans a bootasble harddrive it still booted from A:. Not only was there no disk in the drive, the drive was not even plugged in.

Now I know this is a high end machine, I built it several years ago for a buddy o mine and he spared no expense. It's an Asus P4S800 mobo I think. The usual half gig of RAM, Plextor burner, all the cool toys. This baby has alot of features, but I don't remember a wireless floppy drive among them.

So where did this DOS boot drive come from ? ROM on the board or what ? I am about to melt down some silver dollars to make a bullet for this thing. It's possesed or something.

T^T
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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/23/2011 7:01:35 AM   
PeonForHer


Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline 		Gawd.  This is way beyond my knowledge, but I'll have a go . . . a partition on the new hard drive that wasn't wiped, as you thought, and which the computer thinks is 'Drive A'?  But I'm probably just showing my ignorance here . . . .

ETA - just realised it doesn't have a hard drive.  I'm flummoxed!  Unless . . . it can boot from the mobo?  The bios?  Feck knows!



< Message edited by PeonForHer -- 1/23/2011 7:04:15 AM >

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/23/2011 9:03:42 AM   
flcouple2009


Posts: 2784
Joined: 1/8/2009
Status: offline 		Does the mother board have a boot rom?


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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/23/2011 1:39:20 PM   
PeonForHer


Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline 		Surely it'd show that somewhere if Termy were to get into the bios? 

I'm beginning to wonder if our T lives somewhere near where they filmed Poltergeist . . . .

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/23/2011 6:44:23 PM   
MalcolmNathaniel


Posts: 1394
Joined: 9/20/2010
Status: offline 		Do you by any chance have a CD-ROM in there?
Certain versions of Windows disks, especially OEM media, use memdisk to simulate a floppy drive for certain legacy hardware.

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/24/2011 4:30:44 AM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		UFR

IIRC,,,,,,.

Yes there was a CDROM, which was being used to install XP. However I removed all the harddrives and intended to load a little ten gig. That would then be cloned to an eighty gig which would become the boot drive. There is a 250 gig for data.

The reason for this is the things she does, online gaming. For some reason the OS wouldn't take on the ten gig. Just for the hell of it I plugged the old eighty back in and it booted. Network security is all screwed up, I set it back to defaults. It was forever prompting for the running of scripts, that's gone but it's forever nagging about expired certifictes. I've found that caused by incoirrect settinmg of the system date, but I can't seem to get into that. The little yellow window with the date does not appear when you hover on the time in the tray, nor will double clicking get to where you set the date.

This system is a bit hard to load. First comes Windows, then mobo drvers. Then the drivers for the ATI all in one TV card. Then back to mobo drivers for a few other things. So after all the drivers are in, I figured to clone the ten to the eighty and keep it unplugged as a backup. It can then be recloned at ny time.

This thing is obviously infected. She types in a website in a google search and keeps getting redirected to claim some sort of prize. She mostly goes for online gaming. It might be impossible to protect the PC completely. I figure AVG is the best bet, but nothing is infallible.

But now this date problem, why doesn't Windows give me the date control in the normal way ? That and the constant nagging about certificates tells me that something is wrong there, and it might even be the mobo itself. I'm trying to remember just how old this thing is. I built it years ago. It's old enough not to need any service packs, but it was pretty much state of the art at the time, and close to par with new PCs unless they're expensive. A P4 at 2600 Mhz. Half a gig of RAM, plenty of USB, 1394 was an addon, PCI card, a Plextor DVD/CD burner. No expense was spared actually. All in all a pretty damn nice PC, even today, which has got to be over five years later.

The first thing I should probably address is why the ten gig didn't take the OS. It had been in use as a boot drive and then started the BSOD syndrome. The eighty boots but has so many problems and so little data on it that it is sacrificial.

Can I sys C: booting from the XP disk ? I've never tried. What's more, why didn't the OS take ? I have seen mobos with a fault that prevented it. I'd rather not throw it out though. If I get to that point I want to be sure it's bad, and not possibly the drive or anything else.

But as far as where this DOS boot came from, well it did stop doing that. The thing that gets me is OK, maybe a virtual drive was created, but how could it name it A: when a real A: exists ?

That brings up another question. On my media PC there never was an A:. but it shows in explorer. This OS was fresh to that mobo, not cloned, and XP won't migrate. The original drive was loaded all by itself, no outside influence. Click it and it says to insert a disk in drive A. It's disabl;ed in BIOS, and there never was an A: period. Is this an anomaly in XP ?

Perhaps I should just try running MEPIS Linux off the CD. that might tell me if there is a fault on the mobo. Had this happen - it said "something wicked happened". This was with no harddrive at all, but that was years ago and it was one of those junk CA810 mobos. It has met the curb.

This is a better board, an Asus. When I first built it I did provide a floppy with the BIOS flash on it. Not an update, just the original. It has been lost since then. With the age of this board, I don't kniow if it'll take a flash off anything other than the floppy, and I realized that I simply don't have another PC with a floppy drive handy. I don't have alot of confidence in being able to flash it from a thumbdrive. But I might be able to do it off a spare harddrive. But is that what it needs ?

There are a few other things. For one when it's cold and first boots the cursor wants to move to the left and up. It's not the mouse, I have tried a few. Tapping on the vidcard will affect it, but that might not be the mobo because the all in wonder has a remote control for the GUI. If it's just the vidcard, fine. Another can be obtained.

I've handled some wierd PC problems over the years, but on this one I'm just not sure how to proceed. I have to isolate what is actually wrong, and I think one of my next steps is to get another vidcard, even if just for testing purposes. That's once I get it to take an OS. I might find another harddrive and see if I can load it.

Just not sure exactly what to do at this point. If the all in wonder is the problem it can be eliminated. It doesn't tune digital, but could be used for ripping from a stand alone VCR or DVD player. It has a TV output, but the chroma is not properly interlaced and it has a bad effect on the COMB filter in a TV, leaving dots all over any colored areas of the screen. The SVHS output will eliminate that. But it also has DVI output, that will feed alot of newer TVs directly and it wouldn't matter. Oddly, the frame interlace is fine, but not the choma subcarrier. I figure that is a limitation of the vidcard, probably made it easier to scan convert the output to 480i. That's not so big an issue, I got convertor boxes that provide a perfect signal, interlaced properly in every way at any resolution or refresh rate. They were fifty bucks, but I don't think I can get more at that price. Maybe it doesn't matter, the ability to rip should be more important than the TV output, which is now technically obsolete. I am more concerned with the health of the mobo itself at this point.

More later. I'll find a way to figure out why it won't boot off the ten gig. Hey, maybe it has NYB. Maybe there's a new version of NYB, I don't know. But I'll have to boot from the eighty, and have a look at the contents of the ten. If it has a virus that affects the boot sector I will assume the ten is infected, or maybe I should just boot from the XP CD. But then if that works, why won't it boot from the ten ?

Sometime today I'll get more info. I'll keep you "posted".

T^T

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? >MORE - 1/24/2011 11:55:50 PM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		Now there's another ghost, in a different machine. I guess it might've gotten through the network. The problem seemed to start upon plugging in the laptop, both other PCs got kicked off line. I threw PC2 straight to the modem, it worked. I hooked the router back up, the settings looked right. I had communication between the two PCs. With only PC2 connected, but through the router it worked.

Now in PC1 the 80 (was the current bootdrive) caught secretcrush. Nice little virus, or something but it has a catchy name. I tried to remove it manually. I see they have removal tools, but I like screwdrivers. Didn't even need one. I just switched to the 500 which is fully loaded and secret whatever is REALLY secret now. Let's see her jump across thin air with nothing connected.

So my intention is to go in there, get back to the 80 and manually get rid of it. I am familiar with regedit and I know how to use it. The registry is the key to almost all problems. Years ago I leaarned how to manually remove stubborn shit, like Webshots. I tried to get rid of the secretfuckhead, but I obviously missed an entry somewhere. I'll get more info. Remember I got a damnear identical registry on the other drive with which to compare.

I don't want to cough up the $35, nor do I want it for free. I want to go in there and do my own dirty work. I am intent on fixing that particular OS. Plus I can't find the XP disk rigght now. It'll turn up. But what if I don't have to go through all that. Just know how to get rid of shit. You don't have to delete the files even, just keep them from running. That way shit that downloads itself is gone too, the right way to do it. That's the way I see it.

Notice how a virus scanner always seems to find like 10,000 virii ? Well let's say it's true. But how many of them are causing a problem ? You get something on the web that invokes a file, and it ain't there it will just download it in the background right then and there. You can't stop it. But what caused that action ?

That's the target.

I know I'm crazy, but what do I have to lose by figuring this shit out ?

T^T

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/25/2011 12:00:51 AM   
MalcolmNathaniel


Posts: 1394
Joined: 9/20/2010
Status: offline 		There are some confusing things about your post.

You say that it won't take an OS but then you mention drivers for the ATI all in one (I'm assuming an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder?)

If you can't install an OS you aren't even at the point of installing drivers.

My first suggestion would be to disconnect EVERYTHING.  Reseat the RAM, video card, power connectors.  Disable all the MOBO peripherals.  Now connect one optical drive.  Boot up a live linux CD (most distros are bootable from the CD) Knoppix is a good choice for this.  This will let you know that your video and mouse and keyboard are working.

Now you've got to find a working drive.  Connect one HDD.  UBCD has good tools for working with an HDD.  You need to use FDISK to remove the partitions.  Also use FDISK /MBR to clear the boot sector.

If you are having problems at this point: There are 6 things that can cause issues with read/write to a hard drive: The drive itself could be flaky, the cable could be flaky, the motherboard, PSU, RAM and processor can all have problems.

So take your clean drive and its cable and put them in another computer to test.  If that fails swap out the cable.  If the drive works there then you have an issue in one of those other components.  That means lots of testing.  UBCD has MEMTEST86 for testing RAM, you can also try swapping out the PSU with a known good unit.  Etc.

Hopefully you've got multiple sticks of RAM so you can just swap them out (usually only one stick goes bad at a time.)

Hopefully this helps.

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/25/2011 12:45:40 AM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		Sorry, this is getting confusing. I know the drill about eliminating the failure, hardwarewise, and about what can happen to the ROM in anything, even a modem or something, that can screw it all up, no boot. But in retrospect, I didn't make it clear enough. We are now talking about two separate PCs.

What I called PC1 is my front PC. It feeds all the other things, a projection TV and two separate audio systems. Up until the other day it had an 80GB for boot, and a 500GB for storage, which is where the media files are, well except for a 40GB in there, but I can't leave tht ther because the POS only has one IDE controller. The other two drives are SATA. What I did is to remove the 80GB and let it boot from the 500GB which had been cloned, OS and all back when the thing was new. When my house got a bit more public I decided to no longer boot from the 500 for some sound reasons I think. This PC is also linked to PC2 which is in my bedroom and is next going to start feeding a system in the kitchen. This gives me two instances of VOD possible, or music, or anything. All without ever seeing a cable bill. That is my system. I changed drives because the boot drive caught a virus. I don't like to boot off the big drive.

Now, the original ghost was in my sister's PC. She too had multiple drives loaded for that machine. The ten was intended to be a backup but eventually she started booting from it, and burned it up. It went to BSOD even in safemode. So that OS is toast. So I hooked up the 80GB again. and it boots, I did not load it now, it was loaded a long time ago. In fact, IIRC I loaded the ten and then cloned to it.

But she burned up both of her OSes. Sorry, stop doing that. Whatever. So with her's I got the dual problem, why didn't the OS take ? Why a couple of other things. And, why can't I just somehow fix the 80GB ?

Same reason I can't fix my 80GB. It WAS a backup at one time, but I used it. Mea culpa.

Now of course I have this dilemma of having a bunch of files on the 80, so now what. I have to boot from the 500 and copy them in.

But then could that, just booting with the infected drive just in it as a secondary bring the virus into my big drive ? Possible.

And what to do with her shit is another story, I have to figure out if the mobo is failing or the one drive. If I go fdisk and format all this I am in for days of work loading and tweaking.

How much are those MACs again ?

Sorry this is like a rant, but this is two different units here. Time to turn off my brain for now.

T^T

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 2:39:21 AM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		AHA, call me ghostbuster !

At least on my sister's PC. While her mobo was top notch at the time and has a way to go before it is anywhere near obsolete, there is still age to consider. Remember the days when you needed a boot floppy to access the CDROM ? Apparently that is in the mobo ROM. See I was reloading a drive that already had an OS on it, so I had to set the boot sequence to CD first, otherwise it would boot the FUBARed OS off the harddrive.

So even though there is no A: apparently it took the letter for the virtual drive.

On that one I'm just about ready to clone. The only problem is that there doesn't seem to be AVG for free anymore. I guess it was bound to happen. We'll just have to pay up I guess but I'd like to get a multi PC license, because between the two of us we have five PCs.

Which brings us to my PC1. I do not want to continue to boot off the 500, and I can't clone it to the 80 because it wouldn't even begin to fit. If I reload the 80 I lose my free AVG because they just don't give it away anymore. But it's just a cramp in my penny pinching fingers.

Actually I think I'll still have a go at removing the virus manually. If I can't, then I'll reconsider my options. If I succeed I'll let you know.

T^T

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 4:17:50 AM   
PeonForHer


Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline 		Termy, am I missing something - like, the OS you're intending to install? I found AVG free at http://free.avg.com/us-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free

There's also Microsoft Security Essentials at http://www.microsoft.com/security/products/mse.aspx and Avast at http://www.avast.com/en-gb/index

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 8:37:12 AM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		Thanks, I have no idea how I missed it. It seems to run ya through a couple of hoops first, maybe I missed one. I have the file now but I might find it needs the internet to install. The file I have for 8.5 seems to. Either way I'll take it.

The OS is XP Pro, which I think is about the best thing going, unless I could get 98 to run anything decent these days.

I notice they're always pushing registry cleaners. Speed up your system bla bla bla. Well I don't know exactly what I'm NOT doing wrong, but my PCs do not run slow. I get on other people's PCs and can't believe how slow they are. People put up with it taking like 30-40 seconds just to open the browser. I think that's ridiculous.

Now I just have to decide if it would be better to install the AVG and whatever before or after the cloning. How soon is she going to screw it up ? lol

Next is mine. I have data to save, but then I do have an 8GB thumbdrive. Maybe it'll be enough and I can REALLY reload it, rather than reloading Windows on top of itself. Decisions decisions.

T^T



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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 9:34:22 AM   
PeonForHer


Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

Thanks, I have no idea how I missed it. It seems to run ya through a couple of hoops first, maybe I missed one.


It does, yes. They don't want to make it too easy. ;-) I think I'd do the cloning before installing the AVG - it seems a headache working how to do it otherwise.

Some people swear by registry cleaners, others say they can do more damage than good. My experience is that they've not done very much of either. In any case, I occasionally use the freebie CCleaner - which seems to be just as good or bad as a paid-for program, per the reviews. - http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download It has other useful tools, too.



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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 9:45:19 AM   
RapierFugue


Posts: 4740
Joined: 3/16/2006
From: London, England
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Some people swear by registry cleaners, others say they can do more damage than good. My experience is that they've not done very much of either. In any case, I occasionally use the freebie CCleaner - which seems to be just as good or bad as a paid-for program, per the reviews. - http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download It has other useful tools, too.



I hadn't noticed this thread before ... it's a bit "blind leading the blind" but fun to watch nonetheless ;)

I can't believe anyone runs a PC connected to either the net or a network and doesn't run an embedded virus handler, but WTF ... AVG Free is fine, and for malware I'd also suggest Spybot Search & Destroy - both free. Nothing wrong with CCleaner either, although like you I'm always a bit dubious as to what, if anything, they achieve on an even halfway modern machine.

As to the drives not booting thing (which I couldn't be arsed to read in full, so this may be off), have the hardware jumpers been set? If you're trying to boot off a "Slave" drive, some versions of Windows get the arse, even though they're not supposed to. So look up the drives' manuals online (after virus removal) and see if their jumpers are set correctly.

And don't try to remove a virus "manually" unless you're very, and I mean very, competent. 9 times out of 10 you'll do more harm than good.

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 10:10:22 AM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		I'm hep to the jumpers. It was a matter of boot sequence. I just got nefuddled by what I saw on the screen.

Manually removing the virus ? Well for some reason AVG 8.5 didn't catch it, but I can afford to take a crack at it anyway because my next step is reloading the OS. Problem here is it almost takes as long to customize it as it did to load it.

T^T

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 10:13:28 AM   
RapierFugue


Posts: 4740
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From: London, England
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or
Well for some reason AVG 8.5 didn't catch it


That'll possibly be because it's an old version.

What OS you running?

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 10:21:53 AM   
PeonForHer


Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
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quote:

ORIGINAL: RapierFugue
I hadn't noticed this thread before ... it's a bit "blind leading the blind" but fun to watch nonetheless ;)


Reliably pompous as always, RF.

quote:


... AVG Free is fine, and for malware I'd also suggest Spybot Search & Destroy - both free. Nothing wrong with CCleaner either, although like you I'm always a bit dubious as to what, if anything, they achieve on an even halfway modern machine.do more harm than good.


I've been running Spybot S & D for years, and it's always been reliable. (And I have a fondness for it because its inventor wrote it for his girlfriend as a present. Awwww!) But I've found that Antimalwarebytes' Antimalware whacks more baddies. I've been using that now for a couple of years. - http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

quote:


And don't try to remove a virus "manually" unless you're very, and I mean very, competent. 9 times out of 10 you'll do more harm than good.


*Shudder* Wouldn't touch it unless everything else had failed and I had extremely explicit instructions for resolving a clearly-identifiable, very specific problem.


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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 10:25:09 AM   
RapierFugue


Posts: 4740
Joined: 3/16/2006
From: London, England
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Reliably pompous as always, RF.


<waves archly>

One tries, one tries ...

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 10:26:03 AM   
RCdc


Posts: 8674
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quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

Termy, am I missing something - like, the OS you're intending to install? I found AVG free at http://free.avg.com/us-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free

There's also Microsoft Security Essentials at http://www.microsoft.com/security/products/mse.aspx and Avast at http://www.avast.com/en-gb/index


Avast is fab.
If you have any account at Barcleys, they give you a free programme too and it's really good.

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RE: PC : Ghost in the machine ? - 1/27/2011 10:27:50 AM   
RapierFugue


Posts: 4740
Joined: 3/16/2006
From: London, England
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

I've been running Spybot S & D for years, and it's always been reliable. (And I have a fondness for it because its inventor wrote it for his girlfriend as a present. Awwww!) But I've found that Antimalwarebytes' Antimalware whacks more baddies. I've been using that now for a couple of years. - http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php


Interesting - I use Spybot because (as a non techie) I just do what my techies tell me to, and they all seem to use it. Apart from the LinuxNerds, of course, but I try not to talk to them if at all possible. I wouldn't want to catch what they've got.

I'll have a look at some point though, thanks.

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