My wifes business bought three systems with diamondmax 30G hd’s, two of which died within the first year, and i thought the third had died as well, but just to make 1001% sure it was dead before i sent it in for replacement, i stuck it into my machine and $#@!!! (the hd came from our deceased bookkeepers computer, and died a week after she did)
Half my start-up software won’t load, i have had to disable pop-up stopper, spy sweeper, and other stuff so my machine won’t crash. So far as i can tell, internet explorer, not windows explorer is my shell. Settings for many of my programs have been changed, and the only program which recognizes there is another hd in my system is fdisk; which suggests i should look for a virus remover, or other party disk partitioning software (never used) to access the second hd: fdisk also says the hd is only 20G instead of 30G.
It seems obvious, although it may not be, that if the second hd is virused, and the first hd’s (mine :-[)software has been altered, then it should be virused too, but Pc-cillin 2000 {inc DOScan which now doesn’t work}, avast4, F-Prot {DOScan}, H+BEVD AntiVir, Backdoor, and Tauscan all report there are no viruses or trojans on my system (even the hd they can’t detect)!
With the number of viruses, worms, trojans, macros, and software packages which make promises they can’t seem to keep, i was wondering if someone just happened to have an idea which beast i’ve encountered, or of a software package which specializes in boot sector viruses.
PS: fdisk will not allow me to change anything about the second hd, and i can’t format it because i can’t access it.
Yes i am a fool. The third hd really was dead, its SMART chip had fried, and was interfering with my other maxtor hd. See, skipping steps when diagnosing problems really can lead you down false trails. Thanks raman for getting me back on the right track.