| Antivirus setting in the CMOS affecting a windows installation?
Posted: 11/28/2005 5:57:21 PM | The other day my dad came over and asked me to look at his computer. It was acting up, couldn't get it to properly display things, couldn't connect to the internet, a couple other weird things like that. He was running XP so first I had him run a system restore. Didn't fix anything. I asked him if anyone had changed anything recently and he said no. So I thought well ok... I don't want to spend a bunch of time on this junk so I will just have him reinstall windows. (Remember having to do that once a month with 95/98? )
But it doesn't work. The installation keeps messing up. Sometimes it says it cannot find files, other times the install finishes - but then won't continue on to the third install step. And finally sometimes it claims there is some kind of hardware error but I didn't see it since I was away at the time and my father is kind of a computer idiot (He thinks putting files on a CD-R is called "downloading" and that a CD-RW drive can't read CD's, only write them). We tried using a different windows CD, still didn't work.
Finally he said he wanted to just format it to make it work. So I tried this. Still didn't work. Now I'm thinking the hard drive must be shot... so we get a new hard drive.. still doesn't work. He is almost completely freaking out at this point, so I say to him, you want to try linux? So I install linux with absolutely no problems and it's been working for a few weeks now.
So I've been doing a lot of reading getting ready for my A+ exam as I mentioned in another thread. I keep reading something that has been kind of bothering me. My book says that you have to disable the anti-virus setting in CMOS before installing/reinstalling an OS. Now this has never been a problem for me in the past, and I have never even heard of this causing a problem before, but I can't help but wonder if that is the reason why a compete reformat and hard drive change didn't fix it.
I was wondering then why linux worked and windows wouldn't. I then determined that maybe the antivirus checker works by looking at the MBR for sudden changes and then stops it or something, and since linux doesn't have windows style MBR, it didn't stop the installation at all.
Hmmmmmmm... I'd like to go check that anti-virus thing but I dunno. I'd like your opinion first before I go over there. | |
|
| Antivirus setting in the CMOS affecting a windows installation?
Posted: 11/28/2005 7:26:25 PM | are you sure that all your hardware is compatible?......i had a problem a couple of yrs ago and it was the new memory replaced the new with the old and it installed......sorry...brain freeze at the moment... 
good luck on your A+ | |
|
| |
| |
| Antivirus setting in the CMOS affecting a windows installation?
Posted: 11/29/2005 8:41:21 PM |
maybe the antivirus checker works by looking at the MBR
That's it. Early boot sector virus would change the MBR. Couldn't boot the machine.
If you have the disk utility from the floppy you could zero fill the drive. Then re-install. | |
|
| |
| Antivirus setting in the CMOS affecting a windows installation?
Posted: 11/30/2005 4:02:55 AM | If you have the disk utility from the floppy you could zero fill the drive. Then re-install.
And if you get an Error message while doing so, FDISK incl. /MBR, re-format, Scandisk to mark off any bad sectors if any ... re-install your OS. | |
|
| |
| |
| |
| Antivirus setting in the CMOS affecting a windows installation?
Posted: 1/2/2006 11:30:01 AM | Usually if you have the CMOS AV on you get a message saying a program is trying to rewrite the MBR -- do you want to allow? The fact that Linux installs but Windows doesn't is very interesting. That would completely rule out the CMOS AV blocker.
You might actually have a CMOS virus -- to get rid of that you have to reset the CMOS either by a button, or jumper, or just pulling the power plug and removing the battery for a few seconds.
Be aware the Linux creates a hidden FAT12 partition to boot from and to remove it you'd probably need the latest edition of Partition Magic since FDISK won't even detect it. Using wipe disk and filling the drive with 0s should also do it. | |
|
Home
login 
