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Old woman(mann, sorry)
Baron
Joined: 09 Nov 2007
Posts: 221
Location: Nottingham, England
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 Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 4:09 pm Post subject: Reformatting Xp problem |
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Hi, nice to be back.
My problem is that I've acquired a Trojan so I need to reformat my hard drive.
Unfortunately when I booted from the XP disk to start the formatting process it wouldn't let me delete the partition!
It said that there were temp files on it that it needed and I can't get past that.
Dos commands in Repair Centre were no help either.
I've looked around the web for info on this but found nothing.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
ps it's Xp Pro.
pps I've tried some IT forums but no luck so far, I know there are some capable people here so, fingers crossed.
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Hal9000x86
Baron
Joined: 06 Apr 2010
Posts: 217
Location: The 10 milllion year project that will find the question to the answer 42.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 5:34 pm Post subject: |
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Try kill disk, it writes all zeros to the drive regardless of partitions or another whole drive formatting program. Some programs can even do government standard data formatting.
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Grawlfang
Prince
Joined: 18 Feb 2005
Posts: 1256
Location: The Land of our lord JC, silly walks and all
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| Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 6:11 pm Post subject: Re: Reformatting Xp problem |
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| Old woman(mann, sorry) wrote: | Hi, nice to be back.
My problem is that I've acquired a Trojan so I need to reformat my hard drive.
Unfortunately when I booted from the XP disk to start the formatting process it wouldn't let me delete the partition!
It said that there were temp files on it that it needed and I can't get past that.
Dos commands in Repair Centre were no help either.
I've looked around the web for info on this but found nothing.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
ps it's Xp Pro.
pps I've tried some IT forums but no luck so far, I know there are some capable people here so, fingers crossed. |
Suggest installing Ubuntu...everyone is doing it now-a-days - cheaper that Windows, better than Windows, and does NOT require one to connect to an iTunes account just to get running (and the 'apps' are open source (free) too) as a Mac would.
Ni!
Fang
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Gemjunkie
Prince
Joined: 03 Jul 2010
Posts: 3519
Location: Earth, lately
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Old woman(mann, sorry)
Baron
Joined: 09 Nov 2007
Posts: 221
Location: Nottingham, England
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| Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 3:59 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know anything about Killdisk but the name sounds drastic (I once wiped a drive so thoroughly that I had to throw it away because Windows couldn't install on it).
Would XP format and install afterwards?
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Hal9000x86
Baron
Joined: 06 Apr 2010
Posts: 217
Location: The 10 milllion year project that will find the question to the answer 42.
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| Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 1:35 am Post subject: |
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It only wipes data, not the drive it self.
http://www.killdisk.com/
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Gemjunkie
Prince
Joined: 03 Jul 2010
Posts: 3519
Location: Earth, lately
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| Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 8:34 am Post subject: |
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I can't imagine why the installer is looking for temp files on the HD.
Are you attempting a clean install? XP pro SP3?
Can you get a copy of Parted Magic:
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06186 |
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Old woman(mann, sorry)
Baron
Joined: 09 Nov 2007
Posts: 221
Location: Nottingham, England
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| Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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Could it be the Trojan protecting itself or is that too paranoid?
I don't really know or understand how a Trojan works or their capabilities/ limitations.
Reformat and install XP PRO SP2.
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Gemjunkie
Prince
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mohrorless
Mail Order Goat Bride
Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 11206
Location: NYC
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| Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2010 8:25 am Post subject: |
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A large magnet has been known to not help at all.
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ohiomike
Prince
Joined: 20 May 2007
Posts: 858
Location: Sometimes
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| Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2010 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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| mohrorless wrote: | | A large magnet has been known to not help at all. |
Who woke you up Mohroless? 
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mohrorless
Mail Order Goat Bride
Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 11206
Location: NYC
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| Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 9:19 am Post subject: |
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| ohiomike wrote: | | mohrorless wrote: | | A large magnet has been known to not help at all. |
Who woke you up Mohroless? |
The goat.
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Sir Hamster's Goat
Goat-tacular!
Joined: 21 Jul 2010
Posts: 352
Location: http://goat-simulator.com/
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| Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:30 pm Post subject: |
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BAAAA!
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Michelle
Moistened Bint
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10232
Location: At my desk
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| Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 3:09 am Post subject: |
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Oh my goodness, forget XP (says she who has just re-installed it  ).
Grawlfang's suggestion of Ubuntu is a valid one, but I've come from using Mint 8 and Mint 9. Apart from some network connections that I had with 9, I'd recommend either. I found 8 and 9 really nice to use. Mint is based on Ubuntu with a few extra tweaks here and there.
The only reason I re-installed XP is because I need to use Office 2007 for one of my courses, and I didn't relish the thought of spending most of my time running XP in Virtual Box. Can't wait to get back to Mint though.
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ohiomike
Prince
Joined: 20 May 2007
Posts: 858
Location: Sometimes
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| Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| Michelle wrote: | Oh my goodness, forget XP (says she who has just re-installed it ).
Grawlfang's suggestion of Ubuntu is a valid one, but I've come from using Mint 8 and Mint 9. Apart from some network connections that I had with 9, I'd recommend either. I found 8 and 9 really nice to use. Mint is based on Ubuntu with a few extra tweaks here and there.
The only reason I re-installed XP is because I need to use Office 2007 for one of my courses, and I didn't relish the thought of spending most of my time running XP in Virtual Box. Can't wait to get back to Mint though. |
Just out of curiosity, why didn't you just use Open Office and save the docs as Office 2007 docs? (Open Office will save files as everything from TXT to PDF's).
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Michelle
Moistened Bint
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10232
Location: At my desk
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| Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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I do like Open Office but the formatting can stuff up when you create a doc in one and open with the other.
The TAFE college business course is pretty pedantic (quite anal really) about using MS Office. Currently doing manual bookkeeping unit and spreadsheets unit. Spreadsheets unit "was written specifically for Excel 2007" or something along those lines.
I've also got a MYOB student files disk for the other financial bits of the course so it's just easier to go back to straight XP rather than run it through virtual box.
Hasn't mattered so much for the university courses I've been doing. Guess they're a bit more open-minded.
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Nuadormrac
Prince
Joined: 13 Sep 2009
Posts: 506
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| Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Old woman(mann, sorry) wrote: | I don't know anything about Killdisk but the name sounds drastic (I once wiped a drive so thoroughly that I had to throw it away because Windows couldn't install on it).
Would XP format and install afterwards? |
Killdisk is fine, it is not the same as low level formating a drive, what you probably did which sabotaged your disk. Low level formating a HD incorrectly can do what you're saying, what he's talking about is just something which will wipe all the data from the drive by putting 0s in place of everything stored on it. It will NOT re-sector the disk, etc... We had a teacher who used that on computers in the networking lab back when I took computer networking in college, we could reinstall afterwards.
Another option, might be to try loading something like Dr DOS, which at least has a bundled FAT32 driver, and yet it won't be able to see an NTFS partition. You could do a fdisk /mbr from it, and create a small FAT32 partition, leaving the rest of the drive unpartitioned. XP should be able to continue from there, as it would then see the new master boot record and new partition table. After this, you should be able to delete that FAT32 partition, and continue partitioning it in there. The installer will then just load it's own boot sector over the Dr DOS one....
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