boot sector virus and BIOs trouble...need suggestions.

mastercorm

Here's a situation I recently came across and I;m wondering what you guys think -a woman I know called me, her computer was running slow and her phone was acting up as well. SHe said one time, the mouse started moving and windows kept popping up while she was sitting there. Then, her phone kept ringing sporadically and she got a call from the cops saying someone had dialed 911 from her house though she didnt.
So, I disabled terminal services ran a virus scan with norton (Which didn't pickup anything), and turned off file and print sharing. Then, after turning her computer off, we chekced her phone. It was still having trouble. So I figured there was a bad cable inside, cuz she said the phone company checked the outside lines and said they were ok and she had filters on her phones. So, when i rebooted the computer, it gave me some weird screen and i was like, oh oh. -boot sector virus. I tried to run recovery console to rebuild, but the system didn't respond. Nor did it respond to F5. When i went into BIOS it wouldn't let me change any settings either.

I'm thinking the virus got written to the BIOS. She has a nearly-new dual core computer too, so I don't think I can pull the battery to wipe it to default. I'd hate to see it go to the trash heap, but I'm not sure what I should do from here. Any suggestions?

RussS

A couple things ...



Why do you think you can not pull the battery and reset the BIOS?

Have you removed the hard drive and scanned it fronm another machine?

Have you tried running a boot-up scan from an AV CD?

Exactly how new is it? I would be tempted to send it for warranty repair

mastercorm

it's about 4 months old. I figured the newer motherboards didn't have CMOS batteries in them. Nope, didn't have another machine to scan it from, and actually yes, it is still under warranty so i just told her to have HP take a look at it....which boggles my mind anyway that she wouldn't have just done that to begin with since she's got insurance and its a waste of everyone's time otherwise.
And, nope, a bootup AV scan didn't cross my mind.

sthomas

There may be a jumper on the Motherboard that you can pull that will reset the bios instead of pulling the battery. But if the computer is under warranty I would just go that route and have HP fix the problem first. That thing with the phone is weird though.

sprkymrk

As a courtesy you could tell her to keep an eye on her credit rating. Many forms of malware are now made specifically for the purpose of identity theft.

mastercorm

Yes, I mentioned that to her, and told her to keep an eye on her credit cards and stuff, but i think the problem has been resolved.
She had crossed wires in her phone box, and when the technician fixed them, she said the computer started to run better. Before, we were having problems getting out to the internet on occassion, and it was running terribly slow. I told her to let me know if anything like windows popping up happens again or other trouble, but I think the issue was due to EMI.

JDMurray

If you suspect that a customer has telephone line problems, have the customer order a line test from their DSL service provider. That'll diagnose if they have degraded service on their local loop between the Telco Central Office and their DSL modem. If a service problem is detected, it will be with either with the Telco's lines or the customer's lines in their residence.

mastercorm

the phone company guy who came out determined that they had crossed wires (from stupid squirrels), and when he fixed it, she says the phone's been working great now and the computer has no trouble getting to the internet, and is downloading/uploading at an appropriate rate now. Looks like things are all set, so until I hear otherwise, the problem is resolved. Thanks for the input guys

Kaminsky

Couple of months ago I had an external site had it's wiring eaten away by rats. Rodents like the silicon apparantly. Very weird trying to diagnose that. PCs intermittantly falling off the network for no reason at all and never to come back until I started tracing cables from the patch panel.

Why the cabling was under the hut instead of running internally I don't know.