Ever seen this before?

[iptech]

Yes, it was a Dell. Not sure of age, probably a Dimension. I've had MBR-eating viruses before on his PCs, at one point I had to replace his HDD's, literally open up the cases and replace the physical HDD, because a virus had written itself to the MBR and no amount of virus cleaning could get it off. He ultimately got rid of the machine I originally posted about in this thread. I'm not sure if he ever figured out what was wrong with it. I offered to replace the RAM in the box, but he said no, he was gonna have his repair shop fix it since they sold him the box in the first place!

Of course, the guy who used to do such a wonderful job repairing his PCs only works on corporate accounts now, and the average Joe gets stuck with the front desk techs. This guy has a revolving door of Pizza Tech-level morons running his front desk now, every time my dad goes in there there's somebody new working the desk. My dad will NOT accept the idea that V. is no longer personally working on my dad's desktop. Next time I will simply work on it myself.

I'd LOVE to build my dad a custom machine, but he doesn't have the money, my box cost some $1700 to assemble, just for the parts. And that was in November 2007. I really think now that it was either RAM or the Dell version of the MBR. In either case replacing the HDD or the RAM stick would have solved the problem. But no, my dad goes out and buys a new box.

This belongs in the Technibble "bs Hall of Fame", I've not read such a tale of incredulous garbage since Scott Rogers last signed on here.

Seriously Bytebuster, you clearly have a lot of issues to deal with - being competent & confident in your work is but one of them. I've had a quick read through the many threads you've originated on technibble and nearly always you make derogatory comments about your customers. We are all working in tough times and we all have difficult customers to deal with, but we do the job they pay us for to the best of our abilities, we learn from our mistakes and we move on. If you do not learn to accept and educate yourself via your own mistakes, you will always be "the other guy".

Sometimes customers are actually right, it's only when you don't listen that they become wrong. I think your dad is actually trying to help you.

 

[bytebuster]

This belongs in the Technibble "bs Hall of Fame", I've not read such a tale of incredulous garbage since Scott Rogers last signed on here.

Seriously Bytebuster, you clearly have a lot of issues to deal with - being competent & confident in your work is but one of them. I've had a quick read through the many threads you've originated on technibble and nearly always you make derogatory comments about your customers. We are all working in tough times and we all have difficult customers to deal with, but we do the job they pay us for to the best of our abilities, we learn from our mistakes and we move on. If you do not learn to accept and educate yourself via your own mistakes, you will always be "the other guy".

Sometimes customers are actually right, it's only when you don't listen that they become wrong. I think your dad is actually trying to help you.

I do have a lot of confidence issues, and they're more deep seated than just this. I have indeed learned from my mistakes, it just may not be obvious from the few threads I've posted here. I learned, for example, that when a virus breaks all the links in the OS and leaves dead registry entries all over, that you just need to run registry cleaner and maybe the .exe link fixer, and you don't have to reinstall. Please don't ask me how I learned that, other than "the hard way". You really shouldn't put too much stock in what I say about my dad, we have other, family issues that I don't want to elaborate on here. Also, I have had customers that have been appreciative and kind, and of course I'm not gonna make a post saying somebody was nice to me, it's not news.

 

[AustinB]

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I found it a bit... irksome.

I do have a lot of confidence issues, and they're more deep seated than just this.

In my opinion you have too much confidence. You contradict yourself a few times in this one post and manage to say a few suspect or flat-out incorrect things.

First you say, "I look at the C drive and it's been totally erased." Then you go on to say "I could nuke and pave, but that seems like a copout." How so, if the drive is already "erased"? Also, merely booting into dos and looking at the file structure doesn't really tell you if there is no data. The data might still be there but the drive's filesystem is corrupted. From your post, though, I can't say for sure this is what you did.

"So, we have a virus that knows enough to keep ANY GUI from booting."
As others have pointed out, nope, not the case.

"I just thought it was odd that it wouldn't load the XP Setup."
I suppose, but that's actually a fairly common problem. I've had to yank all sorts of components out before to get XP setup to boot properly.

"...maybe missing 'PXC stack?'"
I'd be curious to see if it's a PXE message you're referring to, which means the HDD is f-ed so the computer is trying to network boot, although the message usually sticks around for a long time. Probably doesn't matter, by now it's not fresh in your mind anyways.

"I was trying to run Avast from DOS"
Why? Didn't you say the drive was erased? Format it and be done.

"a virus had written itself to the MBR and no amount of virus cleaning could get it off"
Again, that's just not right.

"This guy has a revolving door of Pizza Tech-level morons running his front desk now"
Post #6 very subtly directed the same insult in your direction.

I'm sorry if this all comes off as harsh, but if your goal is to be successful you need to stop thinking like the average customer thinks. They either think it's something really easy ("this will only take you 5 minutes"), or way too hard, complex, and even mystical ("my dad always gets rare MBR viruses, this one even knows the difference between XP setup and various boot CDs and blocks them!"). Your overconfidence gives you the go-ahead to believe this stuff and follow through with it. So take a step back, second-guess yourself, and learn better diagnostics, as well as do some reading to help you clarify the basics. Because right now I'd put you in the "knows-enough-to-be-dangerous" category, and that's not a good place to be if this is your business.

 

[RegEdit]

Run a drive fitness test, then zero wipe the whole thing, format, error check then reinstall (if you do decide to reinstall).

 

[Jay85]

Trust me on this one, You dont wanna know where hes getting these viruses from...leave it alone