I think I just caught a virus and my PC is totally screwed!!!

AMD 1133, 256 Micron, SOYO K7VTA-Pro, GeForce2 MX

I knew i had viruses on my PC before 'cause i dont use a firewall and win me isn't exactly secure, and my computer was doing "funny" things.
Last night i got a suspicious email, i think someone asking me for my opinion on some matter and i nuked it right away. Today, i turn it on. No video, my motherboard starts saying something through the PC speaker that i can't understand (good job SOYO!!!). Anyways, one way or another i got into the BIOS and was watching my temperatures, 48 idle for the CPU. but then after like 2 mins my motherboard starts saying something again and then my pc resets. Anyways... I'm gonna get back to troubleshooting it but im running out of ideas... drives are unplugged, changed RAM, unplugged power from mb (then replugged it), cleaned out fans, reset CMOS. i'll try reflashing my BIOS if its stable for long enough.

also, you think its a good idea to SOLDER the L1 bridges to unlock my AXIA?... i have a lot of talent when it comes to soldering (i won several awards).

ughh, that stinks....
do you have another hard drive you can boot off and use to run a virus scan on the other drive? Can you boot off a floppy and get to dos?
I probably wouldn't reflash while it is still randomly rebooting itself. If it reboots while you're flashing, you'll have a whole problem to deal with....

about the L1's, if you can solder them without crossing the bridges, I'd say go for it, just be carefull.
good luck

oh yea, welcome to the forum!

Sounds like a cih virus.
Before you reprogram the bios you should unplug the pc,remove the battery and let it sit for awhile.
Hopefully you have a boot disk to flash with and after flashing boot from it and format that hard drive.
The virus you can possibly reinfect the bios before the os finishes loading off the hard drive if you use it.

I would not try to solder the bridges as the heat from the iron could easily damage the cpu.

so i solder my CPU. i do a damn good job, all the bridges look great.
too bad my chip no longer works


not a good day.

if i m not wrong than he probably caught the sircam virus at that time and probably also had another virus on the comp already but just never noticed it

use the free virus scanner on mcafee to scan and if it detects virus then u need to do ssomerthing about it

definitely sounds like sircam to me too...i've gotten 7 of these in the last week....they're definitely out there (got them=got them in email but didn't d/l em)

I've received that virus a BUNCH of times in email, one of them was like a 6mb attachment! Pooey on that guy for having such a huge file to get sent to me. The others were small. Strangely though, I virus checked his attachment, said it was clean, I even ran it, it was some stupid motivational thing, then I scanned again after and have no virus.

What are you guys doing to get so many virus' sent to you? lol i never had any sent to me... but then again i never sign up for news leters and my email is only a few months old...

it's not the newsletter that gets u the virus........it's people that have your email address on their outlook address book.....

and the virus scanner didnt detect the virus before is b/c the virus was unknown and the virus software companies released the update like the day after or something like that

Ok. I picked up a new AXIA 1.0. Managed to flash my BIOS w/ the most current revision (for me its 2AA3). Reset everything to default. Monitor my CPU temp. in the PC Health section of the BIOS -- stable at 39. However, by computer still resets itself randomly, and my two sticks of Micron RAM don't seem to work simultaneously. This is really bizarre. I've been using PC's since '87 and thought I've seen it all, clearly I haven't.

I grabbed the specific virus removal EXE off "Central Command" (formerly AVP) but I think it requires Win32 to run which is kinda useless. I'll keep screwing around w/ it some more... probably enable virus warning in BIOS so I can see if and when the virus is trying to write itself to my BIOS, then plug in my HD and try to get into Windows ME to run this little file I got off AVP.

Any suggestions at this point are GREATLY appreciated. Thanks

~(-=->sky<-=-)~ (Jul 31, 2001 10:12 p.m.):
if i m not wrong than he probably caught the sircam virus at that time and probably also had another virus on the comp already but just never noticed it

use the free virus scanner on mcafee to scan and if it detects virus then u need to do ssomerthing about it

Click to expand...

True story...today...at work. One of the network admin's at a school district we work for was fired for not keeping Norton Antivirus updates in check. One of the administrative assistants opened the file and the rest was history.

Our exchange server started receiving emails from the school district and were immediately placed under quarrantine in NAV. I placed the inital support and notice call to the principle because the Net Admin. was on vacation (school's out). The principle called him after I gave him the news that the virus we were receiving was comming from them..and told him not to come back to work in the fall...Bummer...but he should have kept NAV up to date.

I suggest you visit http://www.zonelabs.com and download Zone Alarm once you get your box back up and running. You should also consider purchasing an antivirus software package. And...if you try fdisking and reformatting your hard drive....remember to fdisk the Master Boot Record where many virus' hide during a rebuild. At the a: prompt type "fdisk /mbr" without the quotes. Good Luck.

Speaking of the sircam worm, here's another true story....

I got a file that was obviously sircam in my hotmail email account, and I remembered the email it came from (it was a person's last name and I recognized the last name so i decided to try to help this person).

So after I get off work, I go home and get onto ICQ. What luck...the person's on. After about 5 minutes of the usual chit-chat BS, I start talking computers and it turns out that this person had the sircam worm and didn't even know she had emailed me. So I send her the fixsirc.com file from norton and she gets it fixed. Got her pic after that....I'll be [hopefully] meeting her in a week or so

As they say around here....THAT DOG CAN HUNT!

As much as I despise malignant programs, this one might have a happy ending for yours truly. ;D

I would go to the hard drive makers site and Download there low level format utility..This should write zeros to the complete drive,

Then Boot to floppy and flash bios,then install an os to the cleaned hard drive.

I had a pretty bad last couple of days...... frying my CPU and all that, then today my friend's car failed emissions and his engine started doing some really weird **** after the test that I couldn't figure out. Moreover I had this bizarre virus scare, and when i finally got my new CPU my PC kept rebooting randomly or the screen would go out.
When i got my nerves together, i was gonna grab my friend's DURON system and test each component in his system to find the troublesome part. However my clever brother beat me to it (and is now rubbing his victory *(amongst other things in my face).
He heard the bizarre error messages my PC was muttering, hooked up speakers to my PC, then the message was understandable, long story short, it was saying my power supply was bad (INWIN w/ 400W p/s--unlikely), he put in his P/s and PRESTO. i am now typing this message from my fixed PC. The manual however listed only 6 possible VOICE ERRORS and none of them pertaining to the p/s.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah..............
thanks for your help and support fellas, tomorrow i'm gonna unlock my new CPU the right way... once i get some sleep.
thanks again.

Try using a electric circut board marker, it works pretty good no heat to.

hmmmmm

i m thinking of a debug card.....it does help in cases when your comp doesnt boot...(error msg show up on card)

but the problem is that they cost around 15$ us.......is that worth it?