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Hello y'all, right when my own computer was repaired, my fathers computer got into trouble. He was downloading stuff from KaZaA when he, seemingly, downloaded a virus. I don't know this for sure but all hands are pointing that way.

When he restarted his computer it hanged at 'Verifying DMI Pool Data ............'. Anyway, when we wanted to boot from a bootfloppy or cdrom, it seemed as if nothing happened. But the floppy was booted after 5 minutes, and the cdrom was booted after a quarter of an hour. However, these times differ greatly. One time it took more than half an hour to boot from a floppy. Anyway, what's for sure is that this is too slow. :-? The harddisk (S.ATA) couldn't startup because we don't have SATA drivers under DOS. But during POST, the harddrives are recognised and displayed correctly.

Anyway, in order to repair this problem, we tried a number of things:
1) We installed another harddisk (ATA133) to see if the computer could boot from that one. Failed.
2) We flashed the BIOS. The problem were still occuring afterwards.
3) Boot from CDROM (WinXP installer). Installer crashed.
4) Boot from floppy, worked but we couldn't do anything.
5) We ran my own, self-made, Interrupt Virus checker. Didn't return any installed viruses.
6) We reset the BIOS and CMOS (RTC) by unplugging the battery. Problems were still there afterwards.

We couldn't find out where the cause of the problem is, but perhaps you can. Anyway, we were thinking of the bootrecord of the HD, the BIOS, or somewhat deeper. But what is really the cause of this problem?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

This is an odd problem. Were you able to enter into Windows at all? Also the fact that trying another hdd did not work seems to indicate either a bootrecord problem or a hardware problem (considering the random access times of the floppy and harddrive).

Probably a hardware problem, if you weren't able to get into Windows. RAM might've gotten damaged, even the vidcard.

Quote:This is an odd problem. Were you able to enter into Windows at all? Also the fact that trying another hdd did not work seems to indicate either a bootrecord problem or a hardware problem (considering the random access times of the floppy and harddrive).

Windows XP didn't start up, or at least, does it a million times slower. But the computer is *still* working, although booting is a million times slower, appearably. What's causing this enormous slow-down?

Quote:Probably a hardware problem, if you weren't able to get into Windows. RAM might've gotten damaged, even the vidcard.

RAM and VCard aren't damaged, DOS testers prooved they are still intact. Also, VCard still works because we have image over here

Also, some other news: I think the enormous slowdown is caused by memory-fillups. It seems as if the virus, if there is one, repeatedly fills the entire memory. I jumped to this conclusion because I one got the error message 'Memory Overflow', and this is no conventional message of a program, but in the boot process. Can the virus just fill the 512 MB memory with random data, or that each command is stored in the memory up to 512 MB of mem?

It certainly can. Or it can cause a bunch of memory leaks. A 10KB program can take up 100MB of RAM.
Probably a virus.
Get a DOS antivirus.

We've just downloaded one. However, I'm doubting about if it supports SATA HDs... I'll test soon.

Yeah, it really sounds like a bootsector virus dude...hopefully you have the option of restoring your boot sector (I dunno how to do this in Windows NT/XP, but in DOS and WIndows, it was as easy as FDISK /MBR)

fdisk /mbr

Too bad. Doesn't work. Does anyone know what can be done in WinXP about it?

The current society of hackers are approiching fast. If it's not the messed up source code by microsoft workers (mainly girls & bg having sex with them (who: with girls) (understand me, "dont judge me!!!!!!!!!").).

NEWS: You file system is flucked! Reinstall! / Clone (copy) all the files of your current hard drive to a new hdd with all the settings and then format and clone back all the files from the new backup hdd / cd-rw/cd disk.

this guys a character :rotfl: