last week i bought my second wd 1gb hard drive and i slid it into an open "hotswap" bay.. then i restarted my computer, and although the hard drive was recognized in my bios, it was not recognized in windows. so i went into disk mngmnt and it showed as
unallocated space. so i allocated it, rebooted, and all was good. i renamed the new hard drive (E:)"Storage_2". i then renamed my D: drive "storage_1". the D: drive (storage_1) was already passed 75% full.
(sorry if that's confusing)
later that day while surfing the internet, my browser just quit on me (i use google chrome). i restarted it and recovered the pages that i was on, and a little while later,
it happened again. then i got a couple of errors that said that a couple of programs had encountered an error and shut-down.
i scratched my head and thought "that's weird", and that's when it happened...
all of the sudden i got a hard drive warning (i can't remember what it said),
and then another one, and another, all on top of each other. and before i could do anything, an uncountable amount of small error windows cascaded across my monitor.
until i got another error saying that my ram was full or something like that.
so i rebooted.
the first thing i noticed was that my desk top was completely black and the only icons
there was "my computer", and "recycle bin". so i opened up "my computer", saw that all of the drives were present, but when i opened the C: drive it was empty... the same with D: and E:
now, i know that the files are there.(because windows booted up just fine) but windows just isn't showing them. all of my short-cuts in the task bar are gone, the same goes with the windows start menu and the all programs button... empty! no internet explorer, google chrome, nothing.
*note* the amount of space on each hard drive, total size and free space, are reporting correctly.
after awhile trying to figure what to do, an "adobe" update popped-up, so i clicked on that and was able to get google chrome up and running. so i was able to put a short-cut on the desktop to access the internet.
so here i am now trying to figure out what to do about this..
anybody?
It's go the hallmarks of a virus,happened to me a while back,ok options & what would i do in your position,i would assume virus came from data stored on drive & perhaps autorun was engaged when you rebooted with slave drive if you had data transfered to it,i'm only guessing it doesn't matter i would use slave drive as data storage & install linux on same drive windows resides,then transfer any data i want to keep to that slave drive,once done i'd turn machine off remove that slave then restart & reformat reinstall OS.Assume data you have stored on that slave is compromised,it will be necessary NOT TO REATTACH DRIVE untill you have disabled autorun on all drives & then only access it thru a usb housing to scan for viruses,if wore comes to worse distro watch has linux live cd's that have tools required to scan,you can also use linux in dual boot if you install say puppy or ubuntu or whatever free linux OS you like
edit:reason i mention linux is so you can access files & folders once you have them mounted since windows is of little use right now,think of linux as windows but different
Mate, yup u have a virus or some sort of scareware installed..
I take it that u have the Operating system on one part of the disk, then software etc installed on another right?
Best to reload the operating system, but need to wipe the disk just in case.....otherwise try downloading a boot cd from the web somewhere that will scan on boot....
Try this, i havent used it but i have used the CD version...worlks pretty well
you are infected with a "scareware" called System Check. It's a nasty one that moves all your shortcuts and links into a temporary folder. It also flags all of your files and start menu items etc. as hidden.
Be very careful how you go about removing this one.
Check the link below for details, and be sure not to delete any temporary files and folders until after you have the infection removed and your links restored.
