[Sussex] HDDs

[Karl E. Jorgensen]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 09:17:21AM +0000, Mark Barber wrote:
> Gentlemen,
> 
> Is there anyone on list with a good knowledge of HDDs and boot processes?
> 
> Only my daughter managed to get a boot sector virus on her Me machine 
> and when I restored it using NAV it disappeared completely from the boot 
> sequence. Rescue disks cant find it either though the BIOS can so no hw 
> fault. Have tried fdisk /mbr without success and Knoppix but that won't 
> boot either for some reason. I suspect the partition table has gone awol

Perhaps knoppix can help here - assuming it has gpart available:

Package: gpart
Description: Guess PC disk partition table, find lost partitions
 Gpart is a tool which tries to guess the primary partition table of a
 PC-type disk in case the primary partition table in sector 0 is
 damaged, incorrect or deleted.
 .
 It is also good at finding and listing the types, locations, and
 sizes of inadvertently-deleted partitions, both primary and logical.
 It gives you the information you need to manually re-create them
 (using fdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk, etc.).
 .
 The guessed table can also be written to a file or (if you firmly
 believe the guessed table is entirely correct) directly to a disk
 device.
 .
 Supported (guessable) filesystem or partition types:
 .
  * MS-DOS FAT12/16/32 "filesystems".
  * MS Windows NT/2000 filesystem.
[lots of snipping]
 .
 Other types may be added relatively easily, as separately compiled modules.

PS: Boot sector virii (viruses? vira?) are pretty rare nowadays -
    windows 9[58] or something?  Unless win9[58] was the actual virus?

-- 
Karl E. Jørgensen
karl at jorgensen.com   http://karl.jorgensen.com
==== Today's fortune:
lisp, v.:
	To call a spade a thpade.
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