Bad Trouble

Acquired Worm.Win32.VB.an or a varient of that worm. Completely took over my notebook and disabled all my admin rights. I can't access msconfig, windows task manager, regedit, ect. I have unplugged my network card so no futher information can be transfered. I have reached the point where I am just going to reformat and reinstall the OS, but the virus is now restricting me from reformating. The HD is corrupt and cannot complete the reformat. I need serious help.

 

Why wont reformatting work?

Have you tried to access system restore?

edit: just by way of interest. which anti-virus program, firewall and anti-spyware programs did you have on your computer when it got infected?

 

I was using NOD32 for Antivirus, Windows Defender, and Spybot Resident

The worm disabled system restore. It's a nasty little thing.

 

Put your system restore CD or floppy or USB drive into your computer when it's off, turn it on, make sure the boot priority is CD or floppy or USB drive frist, and happy formatting.

 

Wish it was that simple. When it starts to load it comes to a screen saying it cannot continue because it does not want to damage the HD. It then will not let me to anything except to restart.

 

When you turn on the PC press F2 or F8 or F9 or F11 or F12 or ESC depending on which bios it's got, and turn the boot disk priority to cd or whatever first, and confirm. That way it won't access the HDD at all.

 

Yep, I have the optical drive as the one to boot from. Still same error with two different OS disks.

 

Oooh sounds like a damaged Hard Disk to me. Purchasing a new notebook hard drive should fix the problem. Is the boot disk able to find your HDD? So that before you confirm format, it actually displays your HD with the amount of data available and used etc?

 

I don't even reach that point. Can a worm really do that much distruction? I can still access everything off of my computer. But I don't want to try and connect to the internet because of the worm and fast spreeding nature.

 

The actual worm you have mentioned isn't very powerful. The usually procedure for removing something like that is simply to update your virus definitions and do a full system scan. However, if your boot disk won't allow you to reformat due to fear of causing damage to the HD, then perhaps it is your HD that is broken, and the worm was just something that came up by chance.
That worm transfers itself via Peer to peer application and MSN Messenger, so if you do go online, just make sure not to run any of those applications.

 

c:\format /mbr

 

Perhaps it is not this actual worm. I have tired everything though trying to get the drive wiped out. Is there anyway to work around the disabled regedit? or disable the Administor lock out?

Also is there a way to access the registry and edit it without using regedit?

 

Alright, looks like I have been able to gain control of my computer once again, but I have another problem. When I tried to reformat it failed, whenever I startup it will continually try to load Windows Setup first. Is there a way to disable this load up of Windows Setup and once again have it default into loading windows?

 

Remove the boot disk from your drive and then restart? If you have already tried that, and it still goes into Setup, then it means that your format had not been unsuccessful and it is running the Windows Installation.

 

Yep, it was unsuccessful running the installation. No boot disk in the drive.

 

Not sure if this would help but have you tried to fdisk the drive before trying to format it? Get rid of the partitions first?

Also try fdisk /mbr first.

Krista

 

Is there an alternate way to format your HD, I tried the fdisk option but nothing.

*I have fixed my error and am in the process of reformating. Thank you for all your help.