Help! Stealth_boot.b virus and Windows XP

[mywakingdream]

Okay, I had a brain **** and I am in dire need of help. I put a floppy disk in my windows XP machine to clean off a virus (Stealth_Boot.b) and realized I hadn't installed my norton antivirus on my machine yet. (just reload system not to long ago). Was interupted and never installed the norton! I rebooted the machine with the floppy in the drive that contained the virus. STUPID! Anyway, Windows XP halted operation and said I had a bad HD config or a virus (duh, on my part). What can I do to remove this master boot virus without losing my information on the hard drive?

I have tried the following:

1. Tried rebooting in safe mode. no luck
2. Tried rebooting to last good known configuration. same error screen as above
3. Put in another hard drive with windows 98 and with norton Av 7.61 and slaved the windows xp hd to clean it. the windows xp drive, won't show up in the windows 98 explorer. (the BIOS see the xp drive, but not windows 98)

[Sarlok]

I can answer your third question that I discovered myelf after many hours of frustration.

I'm gessing your WinXP drive is NTFS? Win98 can't see (or understand) NTFS drives.

All I can think of is try putting Norton on a CD (if you can), and run it from there. It's kinda sketchy, but the upside is it gets 'rid of viruses and the CD can't become infected.

[FijiJohn]

Sarlok is correct, boot from the NAV CD. Norton should be able to fix this. FWIW, safe mode and last good config come into play after the boot sector has done its work (and the virus has doen its) so neither can touch this. And you won't see an NTFS partition from DOS (i.e., Win9x/ME).

(Hey Sarlok, is it still as cold in Quesnel as it used to be?? Froze my behind off up there in '69.)

[Ammok]

Hi, wakingdream, welcome to sysopts.

Can you install XP on the second drive, then use to disinfect original drive.?(you can always pop 98 back on when your done) I have an old 4gb drive with a copy of XP ready to run in my drawer, comes in handy if the main drive becomes suspect for any reason.

[mywakingdream]

I slaved my main drive with a drive that had windows XP and wala I saw the drive and eliminated the virus. Thanks so much for the info. Each bit helped.

[Ammok]

Pleasure, welcome to sysopts.:D