The Rogue Antivirus that survives through a format

thathagat said:

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a good option that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers

Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.

+1
I have used this with great success, but never tried it against a Virus.

I believe it simply writes over the ENTIRE drive with 0s or something, basically irrevocably deleting everything.

~Lordbob

This is soo strange. I've spent all day on a very similar problem on an XP box. A workmate brought his PC in complaining of very slow web page loading. It booted fine but yes, internet was sluggish even on my work network. He had AVG installed. I tried to update but it was greyed out! I downloaded the latest version from the web and started the install. It got to a point where it needed to connect to the internet but couldn't! It told me to click "next" but there was no next! Only back and close!
I tried to install NOD32. Nope! He was infected with a beauty. Tried safe mode. No good, just continual restarts but it would boot fine normally. I tried a repair install. It got to loading devices but then claimed not to be able to copy a file. I hit browse and the file was there but it insisted it wasn't. This happened for about 20 files I tried! Big problems.
Fired up Ubuntu..no probs. Backed up his data. Wiped the drive with GParted and fresh install of XP. Had all the usual fun of finding drivers, installing hundreds of updates etc. I started at 9:30am and I'm still going now at 5:18pm!! He's gone home and left the PC here (I'm always here late anyway). Seems his teenage kids (who were set as Administrators!!) weren't too picky about what they downloaded or where they downloaded from. The machine was riddled with viruses. I'm going to have a serious talk with him when I see him next. Also, the case is full of dust! It amazes me that people just assume they can use their PCs for as long as they want, with no maintenance and expect it to work just like it did the day they bought it. They'll have their cars serviced regularly but it never enters their mind that their PC might need a little care from time to time....(rant over!!! )

thathagat said:

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a good option that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers

Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.

Yeah, too bad that I thought about it too late
Oh well, next time, I'll use that for sure.

Update guys!
It turns up that the guy had a RAID!!!!! No wonder why it came back, lol. When I did the install, it installed on the "copy" drive and when I rebooted for the 2nd time, it booted on the other drive LOL.

Well, well, it turns out that the other guy simply removed the bad files manually with another computer and everything was saved.

I never did RAID before and so, from my lack of experience, I didn't see that coming.

*thinks*
So, that's what the floppy was for... ahah...

Thanks for the followup.