TECHiE TALKS

If you have problems on retrieving your of data or your data suddenly disappears, or you are having failure on starting up your computer. Then you must have a boot sector virus in your hard disk drive(HDD).  This needs an attention before all your data will be lost, you do not need any boot sector virus removal tool all you need is an installer of you windows XP.

A Boot Sector Virus is a virus that resides in your hardisk’s first sector or usually on the HD0 where the first boot sector resides. The virus replaces the DOS boot sector or commonly known as the Master Boot Record(MBR). MBR is a program that is executed every time you computer starts up. This means that every now and then the virus is also executed every time the computer is started and is loaded into the memory. This could then spread to every storage devices that the computer writes.

My Anti-virus is avira and it has a free services that can be used on your computer. One of the common virus that is widely spread is the boot sector virus BOO/Sinowal.A or the boo.sinowal.d.  When I first saw the virus,  Avira Anti virus has detected the malware and suggested to use the boot sector removal tool called avira boot sector repair tool but sad to say it was to no avail. I was really troubled with the virus since it slowly corrupts the software on the PC and the computer hangs every now and then and it really “hampers” every work inside the office. I thought Avira  could remove the boot sector virus but sad to say it didn’t. I also tried other anti virus and of the same fail result.

I researched the net and found few information and so I decided to post this and hoping that this will be of use to other having the same trouble. There are few information on how to solve boot sector malware BOO/Sinowal.  Avira boot sector removal too has failed and this is one thing that would surely work.

I solved the problem and all we need is a Windows XP bootable CD.  To remove the virus completely the first step is to boot the CD on you DVD/CD drive.  Let it boot until your reach this point.

Press R for repair and you will be this environment

Press 1 to enter to windows directory. Enter your administrator password if you have enabled it. After entering the password, type fixmbr as shown below.

C:\WINDOWS>fixmbr

If you have partitioned your hard drive ( D: E: …) make sure you have a back up for all the files on the other partition because there is a possiblity that the other partition will not function after executing the command because this will change the boot record, erasing the virus that resides on the HD0 of your disk drive.

After typing fixmbr there is a warning that will prompt you, just type y and ENTER. This is very quick, and in seconds a new Master Boot Record is created, the boot sector virus is then is removed form the hardisk. Restart your computer and everything is back to normal.  If you are having troubles accessing the other partition right click on it and format.  then you can restore the files that you have backed u before starting the removal of the boot sector virus.