What was this?

[AndrewRandle]

The other day I put a old supposedly not working drive as a slave on my computer. As soon as I booted it deleted my Registry and some other windows files. Does anyone know what that could have been? I got my computer back to working order and found myself a new wall hanging. Any Ideas?

 

[butchrecon]

Does sound like a virus. I am not sure which one though. Sounds killer. James Collins
Computer Hardware Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

 

[2ffat]

Could have been a number of viruses. Any other symptoms so we can narrow it down?
James P. Cottingham

http://www.ivcusa.com

 

[AndrewRandle]

Well, when It was starting up on the 98 startup screen the screen went black and said. Unable to continue operation, windows is shuting down. So I was able to start from the 98 cd rom but when it was starting it said missing registry files and some others like Vxmm.... I was able to go to a command prompt and still got to my hard drive but just not windows.

 

[2ffat]

It's also possible that a ligitamate program was updating the Registry with the computer was shut down. If the computer was turned off without going through the shutdown, that will do it, too. It doesn't take much to trash a registry. The registry on the CD may not look for the correct drivers and files in the right places. The files could have existed but just not where the other registry thought they should be.

It may have been an older boot sector virus that was trying to erase your hard drive that was stopped when Windows failed. In a worse case, it may have been a timebomb program written by a disgruntled employee. Ouch!! :-0
James P. Cottingham

http://www.ivcusa.com