virus? witch one? can it be un dun?

Ok heres the story. I go to see whats wrong with a friends computer. Turn it on and it says invaled system disk. first thing i do is make sure he didn't leave in a floppy, no floppy so next thought is a crashed hard drive or maybe a virus. the hardrive is there but EVERY file and directory has been renamed it all looks wierd but when using dir in dos everything ends in a smily face

kinda like !!É:)

(I don't know how they got a happy face in the filename don't think there is one in ACSII)

Anyways anyone know what virus does this? and is their a fix? (It doesn't really matter since I formated his hd just wondering if i could have repaird the damage I don't think I could of)

Looks to me serious virus . It's almost difficult to fix. It also renamed some system files . Even if you could repaired it , then the machine is still compromised . So :

Format C:\......................................:D works .

I had the same problem once. I tried taking it to over 5 computer experts and they all told me i had no choice but to format. :( sorry

The real funny thing is my friend got this virus? like 2 or 3 days (so he says) after his Norton subscription ran out.

You could ask for help at AntiOnline.

Just a comment. There is a smiley in ASCII. :)

If there is no important data then I suggest you clean format the whole hard drive including all the partitions.

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Originally posted by wrack
If there is no important data then I suggest you clean format the whole hard drive including all the partitions.

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Not all partitions .

Depending on how well engineered the virus actually was, it could be resident on all partitions.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Pirate
Not all partitions .

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Well I have faced a virus before which actually affected all data in all of my partitions.

Instead of deleting all partition and making backup for all the data , scan them with Norton . A lot more faster and easier .