Packard Bell won't boot, found virus...

[IndianaWoody]

I have been working on a Packard Bell trying to format the hard drive. When I first got the system it had trouble booting, after a while it got to where it would detect the keyboard and then just stop. I can hit the f1 to enter setup but it just hangs on that screen. I took the drive out and put it in another system to format it and see if I could find a problem. When I started the boot it found a virus in the boot sector. It had made some partitions (looks like a variation of monkey B) so I removed all partitions, ran fdisk, formated and got the hard drive back up. Installed win98 and everything worked fine. Put it back in the Packard Bell and it still hangs in the same place. When I first turn it on it sounds and looks like it is accessing the hard drive but then it just stops. Could the virus be in the rom? And if so is there any way to remove it? I looked for the battery on the mother board but I couldnt find it. Sorry for such a long post but I could really use some help on this one. Thanks.

[BigBlue66]

Hi Indiana,

I have a couple of ideas. First, I am almost sure that Packard Bell is a proprietary system, meaning that the bios is actually stored on the first few sectors of the hard disk. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that somebody had mentioned that in another post. Compaq and Hewlett Packard are also proprietary systems.

Maybe the reason that the Packard Bell would not boot in the first place is because there was a virus in the boot sector, or first few sectors of the hard drive, which is also where the bios is stored.

By formatting the hard drive, you may have inadvertently wiped out the bios for the Packard Bell. If that is the case, I am not sure what to tell you as far as remedying the sitiation. Could be that you will need a totally new bios or could be that you can restore it from a Packard Bell restore disk.

If I were you, and since I am not totally sure of the PB proprietary nature, wait until some other guys or gals answer your post. In the meantime, can you find the restore disk that came with the computer? Have you called PB for tech support on the problem?

Good luck. Hopefully, some of the other geeks will have a more definitive answer for you.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

[Reid]

This DataFellows (http://www.datafellows.com/v-descs/monkey.htm) link describes how Monkey creates a relocated boot sector, and how to clean it with F-Prot. You can also download F-Prot for DOS (free). Click Downoads, then Free Tools.

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reido@my-deja.com

[This message has been edited by Reid (edited 12-27-2000).]