A Strange Virus ?

[Debbie]

When I try to open a hard drive I'm getting the following error:
"c:\resycled\boot.com is not valid win32 application"

It appears to be a virus of some sort but I still haven't discovred what it is.
F-Secure failed to recognize it. I must have infected my other pc to, that has no internet.
The only way to clear it is by using my Acronis backup image and format the D: drive.
after copying all the "stuff" to C:

Any idea what the virus is ? Please note that recyled is written "resycled"

[LvR]

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081031193022AAJGP6Z

[Debbie]

Thanks Lawrence, I had already came across that web page but to be honest I didn't try any of the supposed solutions.
I installed my Acronis backup for C: and managed to resque all my stuff from my data disk D: which I formated later.

I'm interested tho know some history of the virus and how it is transmitted. As far as I can remember all I did to, infect the othe PC, has been that I had copied some movies via the USB cable link.

[LvR]

has been that I had copied some movies via the USB cable link

An actual USB cable link or an external USB drive?

Either way, that is the method of spreading the infection and is commonly seen with poorly managed (ito security and sticking it in any machine) USB thumb drives on a daily basis here

[Debbie]

An actual USB cable link. USB to USB Bridge Cable, PClinq2 (ANSI).

[LvR]

Then, I am sorry to have to say this, but imo you have more than one machine infected and possibly/definitely all drives ever plugged into those machines involved since the first infection

[Debbie]

True, Both PCs and the drives on each C: and D: have been infected, but thank heaven I always keep a backup of my system drives. As for the rest it as been a matter of copying the files and folders individualy, format the drives, then copy back all the items.

It appears that the problem has been solved, "Fingers crossed"

[Marshmallowman]

We had some test machines infected with a virus/trojan that hid itself in the system directory "system Volume Information".

It was getting around on usb drives, it infected my usb thumb drive but the virus scanner on my machine caught it.

There was a time when floppies were the big target for viri, eg read/write bootable etc.
USB drives are "it" now, but people just don't seem to have clicked about the risks.

Ever machine I own I always turn off autoinsert/autorun on all drives(been doing that since win 95)

[cjolley]

Is this an NTFS only thing?
I don't see "System Volume Information" on my thumb drives.

If so, then I didn't know anyone ever formatted a thumb drive using NTFS.
I always use fat32 or ext2/3 (the ext2IFS driver is installed on my Windows PCs)

[The PIT]

Yeh what ever happened to write protect usb drives???? Very hard to come by these days.
I got a usb virus the other day. Virus scanner said it caught it but it only deleted it off the usb stick after it had infected the hard drive. The dumb virus checker then couldn't see the virus on the hard drive.
Killed it with combofix and malwarebytes antimalware. Sad to say the virus checker was mcafee enterprise edition 8.7.

[Marshmallowman]

you have to have show hidden/system files enabled to see the system volume information

[Kruzin]

Viruses are everywhere.
Even 'family/kiddie' sights are not safe.
I made the mistake of not running protection on my kid's rig. This rig is in our living room, and they do not surf the web without me being within eyesight.
I saw every site they went to, all seemed benign to the naked eye. Just kiddie stuff.
Yet recently, somehow, the rig became so infested with crap that it could not run for 5mins at a time.
Installing AVG, SpyBot and AdAware turned up litterally HUNDREDS of issues...and even after cleaning with all of these proggys, the rig would not run right.
Formatted, re-insatalled (with proper protection this time), and no issues since...
Fortunatly, it did not make it's way through the LAN...but it could have.

NO GLOVE, NO LOVE!

[Debbie]

I wouldn't touch the internet without a clean backup of my drives. Virus scanners do spot viruses most of the time, BUT not often kill them compleatly to the detriment of an efficiently running OS.