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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/27/2009 5:32:04 PM | Long post warning, but it'll narrow down the advice given so I'd rather just get it out of the way.
I have a system that's getting fairly outdated for what I need, so I'm just waiting on parts to be shipped here for my new system (it's going to take a couple of weeks at least to get it all). I was using this system right up until a few days ago, when my neighbour's 14 year old asked to use it for a school project. Apparently, that project is on porn and he ended up giving "me" a virus (Security Tool people, you should just die now).
I can't do a clean OS install because a friend of mine took some pictures of her kids from her SD card and put it on my hard drive before deleting them. I tried using Ubuntu, but for some reason Nautilus shuts down every time I try to open a burning program. I started emailing them to her, but she's a big baby and refuses to accept them this way... she is deathly afraid of her computer catching my virus. She wants me to wait for her husband to get home a week from now so that he can take them off "safely". *grumbles under her breath*.
Not wanting to start something up (like severe maiming), I decide just to use the brand new SATA HDD I have for future backup in this system for the time being. Problem is, the mobo has IDE slots only. Instead of buying a new one, I bought a connector that will convert SATA to IDE. I, however, can't get the computer to recognize the hard drive at all.
Does anyone have any experience with these adaptors? This version connects directly to the mobo and has room for two SATA connections, and they're clearly marked "master" and "slave" so I assumed it would be pretty much idiot proof. If so, is the problem most likely the connector or the (previously unused) hard drive itself? It didn't come with any instructions and the manufacturers' downloadable user manual is next to useless. As a matter of fact, it's just a "schematic" of the adaptor itself with two arrows pointing to "master" and "slave"
Sorry for the rant btw, but I'm working on 3 hours sleep, cold medicine and I can't play any of my games :( | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/27/2009 7:02:25 PM | It has just the one HDD (at a time). I was running windows on the original, it got so corrupted within a couple of reboots that I can't even get it to load in safe mode. I have to switch them out because the mobo has 2 IDE slots ... the new HDD needs one and my DVD-rom is running off the other. I'm running Ubuntu from CD. :(
Forgot to add, if anyone has any other ideas to get those files off my original hard drive in a "safe", "guaranteed" non-virus sending way that will be acceptable to the type of person who would have 200 pictures of her cat and over 450 of her children in 3 months please let me know.
*Off to take more medicine and to try and get some sleep so that she's not this cranky tomorrow* | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/27/2009 7:53:14 PM |
I can't do a clean OS install because a friend of mine took some pictures of her kids from her SD card and put it on my hard drive before deleting them. I tried using Ubuntu, but for some reason Nautilus shuts down every time I try to open a burning program. I started emailing them to her, but she's a big baby and refuses to accept them this way... she is deathly afraid of her computer catching my virus. She wants me to wait for her husband to get home a week from now so that he can take them off "safely". *grumbles under her breath*.
Copy them to a flash drive or email them to yourself, your/her antivirus should detect a virus if it it's up-to-date (you can zip it up if you want and just scan the zip file)
Not wanting to start something up (like severe maiming), I decide just to use the brand new SATA HDD I have for future backup in this system for the time being. Problem is, the mobo has IDE slots only. Instead of buying a new one, I bought a connector that will convert SATA to IDE. I, however, can't get the computer to recognize the hard drive at all.
Try booting it with a 'Live CD' (ubuntu/gparted) if it doesn't see it, it's a hardware issue/setting.
Do you have power going to the adapter/drive?
Does anyone have any experience with these adaptors? This version connects directly to the mobo and has room for two SATA connections, and they're clearly marked "master" and "slave" so I assumed it would be pretty much idiot proof. If so, is the problem most likely the connector or the (previously unused) hard drive itself? It didn't come with any instructions and the manufacturers' downloadable user manual is next to useless. As a matter of fact, it's just a "schematic" of the adaptor itself with two arrows pointing to "master" and "slave"
Do you know the make/model of the adapter?
It should match up master master, slave slave... | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/28/2009 12:46:30 AM | Here is a How-To Video:
http://www.cooldrives.com/sahadradtoid.html
Here are a couple guides:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1043935.html
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000415.htm
Here is a troubleshooting flowchart:
http://www.fonerbooks.com/ide_hd.htm | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/28/2009 6:14:27 AM | For starters, the SATA to IDE adapters generally only work for adapting IDE to SATA controllers...not the other way around. You'll have to buy a SATA card. Even if it's designed this way, I don't think it'll actually work. You'll need to buy an SATA controller that plugs in to a PCI slot. You'll need to make sure you keep the driver disc with it...as any OS installation program will need the drivers to actually be able to see the drive (this might be what your current problem is).
However, as far as the photos....viruses and malware do not infect .jpg files by themselves...there's nothing advantageous about doing it. With that being said, if you can get Ubuntu to boot on your system, copying the files to another location will be just fine. Your friend is a little too anal..scared..and don't know how things work. Tell her she's more likely to get infected by malicious advertisements posing as legit services than from the JPGS on your hard drive (slashdot just had an article about hackers posing as legit companies purchasing ad space so they can in turn, distribute malicious advertisements)
If your friend is making you wait till her husband gets home, then that's no friend. In this case, I'd attempt to back them up, but if it fails, then you just need to remind your friend not to rely on you to keep HER data and she should of a) kept her own backups and b) accepted the files when you offered them to her. You've got stuff to do, you can't sit around without a computer for a week. | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/28/2009 1:06:42 PM | Yay... I got it fixed. The problem was a faulty power cable. It's working like a charm.
Copy them to a flash drive or email them to yourself, your/her antivirus should detect a virus if it it's up-to-date (you can zip it up if you want and just scan the zip file)
I tried talking to her about doing that but she was talking to her husband and (as usual) she heard a couple of words and went nuts. He told her what the options were and she picked up "ghost" and is convinced that that is the way it MUST be done because her husband knows what he's talking about. Sigh.
Do you know the make/model of the adapter?
http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/383
However, as far as the photos....viruses and malware do not infect .jpg files by themselves...there's nothing advantageous about doing it. With that being said, if you can get Ubuntu to boot on your system, copying the files to another location will be just fine. Your friend is a little too anal..scared..and don't know how things work. Tell her she's more likely to get infected by malicious advertisements posing as legit services than from the JPGS on your hard drive (slashdot just had an article about hackers posing as legit companies purchasing ad space so they can in turn, distribute malicious advertisements)
I know that, and you know that, but she's not hearing any of it :(
The funny thing is, my ISP partnered with Yahoo for email, so there's an outgoing virus scan, and there's also automatic scanning on her end. 3 months ago, her husband called from his work site and asked me to go over and check on the computer because the power supply was on the fritz. I headed over there with my backup and a fan... she stopped me when I was about to open the case because she was afraid that my "fooling around in there" would mess something up and she or the kids would get electrocuted by mistake. She ended up getting a in-home repair guy to come do it because "he went to school for it" . Pfft.
If your friend is making you wait till her husband gets home, then that's no friend. In this case, I'd attempt to back them up, but if it fails, then you just need to remind your friend not to rely on you to keep HER data and she should of a) kept her own backups and b) accepted the files when you offered them to her. You've got stuff to do, you can't sit around without a computer for a week.
I've been friends with her husband since grade school and put up with her for his sake. Have you ever had a buddy come up and ask you to be nice to his GF because he really likes her and he knows you'll probably only tolerate her at best? It's like that. | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/29/2009 8:47:12 AM | Well, that was short-lived.
Yesterday I got my hard drive up and working, installed windows, installed/updated all my drivers, installed a game and it was working perfectly except for slight problems with my video card. It was late by the time I was done so I just powered down and went to bed.
Today I tried to start up and it was going into startup over and over. That was my original problem after the infection (after a couple of reboots) and why I went with the other hard drive.
I disabled the restart and got the BSOD (blue screen of death). It's getting as far as mup.sys then nothing. I ran recovery from my windows install disk, and CHKDSK first gave me a 'no problems warning', then got to 75% and gave me the unrecoverable errors message. I then tried a fresh install (which seemed to be working) but at the first restart I got the BSOD again.
I'm going to be checking out the hardware a bit at a time (starting with RAM) in case a hardware failure brought this on and not the malware, but what are the chances that I have a boot virus? Does anyone know any linux friendly programs I can use for hardware/virus scans? | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/29/2009 1:08:17 PM | | shutdown your pc, unplug ALL wires to your tower. take the cover off, remove the small battery which is on your mainboard. leave it sit for about a 1/2 hour. put your battery back in, start it up. tap delete to get into your bios setup, set bios to optimized defaults, save and exit. before you save and exit be sure your boot order is set at cdrom, floppy [if any], then hdd. btw is your video card an addon or is it onboard? | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/29/2009 4:00:59 PM | Like RPM said,
http://www.wikihow.com/Reset-Your-BIOS
and
Scan w/Linux:
http://njlinux.blogspot.com/2008/01/virus-scan-windows-using-linux-live-cd.html
Yesterday I got my hard drive up and working, installed windows, installed/updated all my drivers, installed a game and it was working perfectly except for slight problems with my video card. It was late by the time I was done so I just powered down and went to bed.
What OS is it?
Possibly a driver issue, can you start in safe mode?
and
I tried using Ubuntu, but for some reason Nautilus shuts down every time I try to open a burning program.
Failing RAM can cause weird issues and that could be the issue since Live CDs run from RAM and you got errors when trying to burn a CD
try 1 stick at a time or try this:
http://www.memtest86.com/ | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/29/2009 6:51:52 PM |
shutdown your pc, unplug ALL wires to your tower. take the cover off, remove the small battery which is on your mainboard. leave it sit for about a 1/2 hour. put your battery back in, start it up. tap delete to get into your bios setup, set bios to optimized defaults, save and exit. before you save and exit be sure your boot order is set at cdrom, floppy [if any], then hdd. btw is your video card an addon or is it onboard?
I haven't messed with much on the mb before so I'll read up on it and do it tomorrow .. ty. My video card is an addon.
What OS is it?
Windows XP. I probably should have made the jump to Vista, but I heard too many horror stories.
Possibly a driver issue, can you start in safe mode?
I couldn't start into safe mode. Any attempt to start windows at all caused the reset. That's why I opted for the second clean install. After formatting, I got as far as the first reboot during install and when it started up again, I got the Fatal Error message (STOP: c000021a , 0xC000026c (in case it helps narrow the problem down)). I used an ultimate boot cd to do a scan of my hard drive, which showed no errors... it was the same with memtest.
Maybe a good swift kick to the side of the case would do the trick... if not, at least I'll feel better. | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/29/2009 9:38:50 PM | Resetting the BIOS should have reset the main BIOS password but maybe not the BIOS Admin password...
Not sure why you would have a new password that you didn't have before unless it reset to a default password:
BIOS How-To & Default/Backdoor Password List:
http://www.technibble.com/how-to-bypass-or-remove-a-bios-password/
If you're talking about a Windows password...
Windows Password Cracker:
http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/ | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/29/2009 10:05:58 PM | STOP: c000021a
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;156669
The STOP 0xC000021A error occurs when either Winlogon.exe or Csrss.exe fails. When the Windows NT kernel detects that either of these processes has stopped, it stops the system and raises the STOP 0xC000021A error. This error may have several causes. Among them are the following:
* Mismatched system files have been installed.
* A Service Pack installation has failed.
* A backup program that is used to restore a hard disk did not correctly restore files that may have been in use.
* An incompatible third-party program has been installed.
0xC000026c
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315241
A Stop: 0xc000026C or Stop: 0xc0000221 "Unable to Load Device Driver" Error Occurs When You Start Windows XP
This behavior can occur if one of the following conditions is true:
* A device driver file (.sys) is missing or damaged.
The missing or damaged file is probably the driver file that the error message mentions.
* The User32.dll file may be missing or damaged.
You might need to flash your BIOS and maybe update your chipset drivers.
I think it can still be a possible RAM issue,
Memtest86+
http://www.memtest.org/#downiso
And if it was a virus, you might want to consider wiping the drive...
Lysol or DBAN:
http://www.bauer-power.net/2007/08/quick-wipe-hard-drives-using-lysol.html
http://www.dban.org/download | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/29/2009 11:43:53 PM |
I used an ultimate boot cd to do a scan of my hard drive, which showed no errors... it was the same with memtest.
just noticed this part, so I guess RAM is ruled out, you can also scan for viruses with your UBCD4Win and a network connection, you don't need to use the Linux CD for that unless you want to.
Here's a similar problem:
http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/system-keeps-rebooting-after-1st-intall/3216.html
Comment:
I Hate windows XP.. So I decide to go back to win 98. I install it without a hitch and it's going to rebootloadup the first time and just before it's suppose to get to the desktop screen (after the splash screen) it reboots.. It keeps looping at the same spot.. SO I install win xp again and grab Windows 98se. Formtat and instal 98se.. SAME THING! I've gone through all the message threads and the only thing I;ve read is that the autoexec.bat may be calling the win.com program, but this isn't rebooting at that point.. the autoexec.bat has been loaded already at this point..
I had to install XP again to access this forum and ask for help.
System specs: Not that I think it should matter.
MSI Kt7 Pro Turbo
AMD Athlon 1.0 (Not overclocked)
640 MD Sdr13 ram
GE Force 2 GTS 4x AGP card.
Someone please help!
Reply:
Hey, I had that problem and found out that resetting the cmos helped. However i would advise you to reformat your drive and do a clean install. Why am i saying this? well i believe XP leaves lots of fragments when uninstalled.
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/30/2009 2:51:32 PM |
password for which? the bios?
Sorry I wasn't more clear... the admin password for windows recovery console. I think I may be locked out because I've hit the max number of boot attempts. I tried using Offline NT Password and Registry Editor but while it claims that SAM is loaded, after I attempt to edit the password it says it's not... sigh...
I'm not so sure that it's a virus anymore. The boot is still hanging at the drivers mup.sys thing. I checked out the boot order for XP and the next one is agp440.sys. Which would explain the video problems... I think it's clashing with the ATI drivers I installed the first time I had the system up and running. At least I hope, because a good wipe and fresh install just might work.
Thanks for the replies guys, I really appreciate it. Hopefully I can get this figured out before all my shiny new parts get here.... with my luck it'll happen again. | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/30/2009 4:33:39 PM |
Sorry I wasn't more clear... the admin password for windows recovery console. I think I may be locked out because I've hit the max number of boot attempts. I tried using Offline NT Password and Registry Editor but while it claims that SAM is loaded, after I attempt to edit the password it says it's not... sigh...
NT Reg/Passwd Editor is a great tool, I've also found Ophcrach to work really well (cracks using Rainbow Tables)
I'm not so sure that it's a virus anymore. The boot is still hanging at the drivers mup.sys thing.
How to fix an XP\Win 2000 System that freezes after loading mup.sys while booting
http://www.aitechsolutions.net/mupdotsysXPhang.html
I checked out the boot order for XP and the next one is agp440.sys. Which would explain the video problems... I think it's clashing with the ATI drivers I installed the first time I had the system up and running. At least I hope, because a good wipe and fresh install just might work.
Maybe restart a few times after the fresh installation so "Last Known Good Config" will be available, then Update and download some fresh drivers for your computer including updated chipset & flash your BIOS.
Backing up after you Install and again after successfully loading the drivers isn't a bad idea either. Good Luck | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/30/2009 7:47:38 PM | k.. did a format of my hard drive, tried to reinstall but it didn't work. It loaded the setup files, restarted and I got the blue screen again right after the splash screen. Looks like I have a long day of trying to mess with the hardware some more ahead of me...
*kicks rocks* | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/30/2009 9:18:42 PM | Check your install disk for scratches & smudges...you might want to try flashing the BIOS with a boot cd:
http://www.bootdisk.com/bios.htm
Here are some good troubleshooting tips:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/bare_bones_troubleshooting_installation.htm | |
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| Malware, Ubuntu, and hard drives... oh my!
Posted: 10/30/2009 9:20:43 PM | | Full format, using one of the wiping tools on the ultimate boot cd. I can't remember which one, my first choice was DBAN but I couldn't get it to load. | |
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