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Best way to resolve. Advice needed.

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beginneroc

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My hard drive set up is C: master, D: slave.
There has possibly been some malware issues. ie uncertain removal.
Somehow my D: drive has BOOTSECT.BAK 8kb and msdia80.dll 874kb showing.
I don't know how they got there.
My thinking is to format with Linux and then reformat with Vista (existing) to remove any traces..
What simple linux distro will do the job and is there any better way to resolve?
I don't think Vista reformat will do the job on its own??? I have already tried.
Thanks. :confused:
 
sorry misread, you just want to reformat the slave drive? Just format it in windows, no reason to install a OS on it and then format it again from windows.
 
A reformat will overwrite everything on the drive. It doesn't matter what OS you overwrite with. You should be thinking about Filesystems and not OS's. You'd want to reformat with NTFS since your on windows, you'd gain nothing by overwriting with a linux filesystem.

That said, bootsect.bak is a boot sector backup and you shouldn't worry about it. It's not malware. The other file also likely isn't malware, but was placed there by a program installation.

If you've had malware issues, and want to make sure your 100% clean, you should reformat C and reinstall windows.
 
I have had malware Data Miner evident and removed it. My thinking is to reformat both drives to remove any hidden traces remaining on C: and D: Simple format of D: (slave) within windows doesn't work. Something must be corrupted. When trying to backup to D: it is not recognised and I am always thrown to DVD/CD. ie E:
Edit:So my thinking is D: needs to be reformatted also.
 
Last edited:
The freeware application "Eraser" will let you erase over used/unused areas of your hard drive, or just those files, with several passes of random data. Perhaps that, combined with formatting, will do what you're looking for.
 
benbaked said:
The freeware application "Eraser" will let you erase over used/unused areas of your hard drive, or just those files, with several passes of random data. Perhaps that, combined with formatting, will do what you're looking for.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
I have unallocated partition on D: which I want to remove. Can 'eraser' remove that. Does windows reformat leave only primary partition?
 
beginneroc said:
Thanks.
I have unallocated partition on D: which I want to remove. Can 'eraser' remove that. Does windows reformat leave only primary partition?
Click to expand...

You can delete that partition from within Windows through Start Menu / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management. In that Disk Management section you can delete any of that drive's partitions and create new ones.
 
benbaked said:
You can delete that partition from within Windows through Start Menu / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management. In that Disk Management section you can delete any of that drive's partitions and create new ones.
Click to expand...

I am in disk management section but struggling to find how to remove unallocated partition.
Edit: 1.I cannot delete an unallocated partition, it needs to be formatted first. 2. Windows apparently gives opportunity to remove partition during format. (I googled for info.)
I will post results when completed.
Thanks. :)
 
Last edited:
If you are formatting that drive anyway then you should delete all the partitions on that drive and create one new one using the entire drive.

You cannot deleted the unallocated space bacause its not part of a partition thus is already deleted.
 
If you are going to format both drives... why not do the clean install of vista... and in the install process delete+format all drives then... or if you wanted to do linux and then windows... just grab a live cd would be easiest but make sure ya know what you are doin first... but if you are worried bout malware/virii/etc... you'd be best to format both hdds at the same time...
 
Hi folks. Fresh install of vista. Situation has not really changed much.
D: (slave) is still showing BOOTSECT.BAK but other file is gone. AVG shows the following in D: $AVG. $RECYCLE BIN. Boot. System Volume Information.

Edit: The problem still remains that I am unable to backup to D: when I try I am thrown out to DVD/CD. D: is not accessible to do entire Disk backup.

Corruption could come from my mishandling of spybot.

Edit: Creating new thread in Microsoft operating systems.
 
Last edited:
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