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Dealing with an MBR virus

  1. fdisk /mbr and fixmbr will fix the MBR but not necessarily get rid of any viruses in it [msoft].
  2. Use the Ultimate Boot CD which has a bunch of low level HD tools from various manufacturers to zero fill the drive, erasing the MBR and any other possible hiding places for the virus. I used the iso found at mrbass.org.
Diagnosis:
I decided that my parents computer was infected by a boot sector virus because:
  1. Installation of Linux or Windows XP went fine from CD.
  2. After the first reboot win xp or linux would stop working and freeze during bootup
  3. I could get winxp working again by booting into recovery mode and using fixmbr
  4. A scan by the seagate tools did not uncover any errors in the disk
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