HDKiller

[DavidR]

@madeleine post:6

Yes, It was detected the first time during a boot-time scan. I have run that twice since then to try to find it but it has not been detected again. During the first scan there was no removable media in any of the drives but this is my parents’ computer and they still use floppy disks all the time. I have something called Spyware terminator. It has not found the virus either. Is that equivalent to what you suggested or should I install and run that too?

It is indeed strange that it no longer detects it and stranger still that HDKiller as mauserme said a boot sector virus, which would likely to be detected in a floppy or the system memory. If detected in memory avast would usually suggest a boot-time scan, which by you comments not mentioning this, I assume didn’t happen. The fact that no floppy was present makes this even more strange.

A google search for hdkiller returns many hits and this is just one and gives a good description of what it is trying to do and the fact that the system may become unstable, so I should check this out and see if any symptoms match, http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/hdkiller.shtml.

It may be worth doing an on-line scan as a further confirmation one way or another if nothing is detected I guess it is a watching brief to see if anything returns (and make notes).
Bit Defender On-line Scanner
TrendMicro’s Housecall
F-Secure On-line Scanner ActiveX required

More On-line Virus Scanners and other useful Links Security-Ops.eu.tt