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somehow when re-installing win7 x64...KABOOM!!

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gpeschel

New Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Help plz?
Had a ton of viruses on my PC, so i opted to reinstall win7 x64. Somehow the drivers for the amd Athlon II x3 425 processors and my router, an xfinity TC83050. Im in bios setup, M5A78L-M LX is the cpu. The sata devices are disabled. What should i do?
 
Help plz?
Had a ton of viruses on my PC, so i opted to reinstall win7 x64.

Somehow the drivers for the amd Athlon II x3 425 processors and my router, an xfinity TC83050.
Makes no sense. Somehow the drivers did WHAT?

Im in bios setup, M5A78L-M LX is the cpu. M5A78L-M-LX is NOT a cpu but a motherboard model number.

The sata devices are disabled. What should i do? What should you do about WHAT? If you need SATA devices then of course ENABLE them in bios if disabled. So far what is written tells us no information to try and help you repair/change/fix whatever it is you have a problem with.

RGone...
 
I can add simply reinstalling Windows WILL NOT cure your problems with viruses.
If you have several or perhaps a herd of them in there, most if not all will still be on the drive doing whatever it is they do.... Formatting the drive doesn't help with those most of the time since virus authors already know you'd probrably try it.
 
I can add simply reinstalling Windows WILL NOT cure your problems with viruses.
If you have several or perhaps a herd of them in there, most if not all will still be on the drive doing whatever it is they do.... Formatting the drive doesn't help with those most of the time since virus authors already know you'd probrably try it.

It often can but it depends on the kinds of viruses. Some live in the boot sector. The surest way would be to delete all the partitions with something like GParted and then do a long reformat before reinstalling the OS.

I clean people's computers of malware all the time in my business. Usually, I can effectively clean viruses and other malware using a cocktail of cleaning tools that include Malwarebytes, ADWCleaner, Hitman Pro and Eset online without having to reformat or reinstall the OS. This is preceded by deleting from all browsers the malware plugins and search engines and restoring all browser home pages and search engines to default. Occasionally, cleaning the malware will break the OS and it has to be reinstalled.
 
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The point I was trying to make is if simply trying to do a reinstall of the OS, formatting the drive and proceeding with the install most of the time doesn't help.

As you pointed out, it takes a cocktail of anti-viral stuff to be rid of them without having to do a reinstall but sometimes these nasties get into the bootsector and are almost impossible to root out without having to lose the now dirty OS.
The best way is as you also mentioned, Use GParted or something similar such as DBAN to give the drive a good cleanup - I personally use DBAN if I have the need to "Cleanse" a drive.

I do agree with your points so we're on the same page, just maybe within a different paragraph on it. :D
 
On very rare occasions I've also seen BIOS viruses. Though, wouldn't have a clue how to fix that.
 
Many antivirus products now contain rootkit protection so it's not quite the problem it used to be.
 
Flash a new bios?

It's known that a BIOS can become locked/unflashable to the chip if certain parameters of the BIOS file aren't done correctly and I've seen a few BIOS mods with this error - Luckily I haven't been affected by this myself but do know a few people that have been.
From what I've seen in the past, viruses intended to affect a BIOS have an "Error" producing function that duplicates this same error so you can't flash it out.
That would mean the only way to be rid of it easily is to get another BIOS chip.

If you have the $$ or know someone with a machine that can actually force a flash/erase/format of these chips, those can probrably fix the problem BUT the safest bet would be a new chip.
 
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