dell dimension 3000 - how to wipe clean/format?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Someone has told me (after I gave up on the Dell tech helpline after two
days of being told the same thing) that I probably have a boot sector
virus. ( the situation has spiralled since my last post and am now
frequently evicted from my pc or being told I have dirty ntfs files and
sometimes that I don't even have a hard drive)

Is a boot sector virus fixable? More importantly is it going to be
expensive?

I swear I was fully up to date with the McAfee updates - I can't
understand how this has happened.

All help both prior and further is very much appreciated.

Carmen.


--
whoopidoo

 

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Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"whoopidoo" <whoopidoo.1sjgjm@news.computerbanter.com> wrote in message
news:whoopidoo.1sjgjm@news.computerbanter.com...
>
> Someone has told me (after I gave up on the Dell tech helpline after two
> days of being told the same thing) that I probably have a boot sector
> virus. ( the situation has spiralled since my last post and am now
> frequently evicted from my pc or being told I have dirty ntfs files and
> sometimes that I don't even have a hard drive)
>
> Is a boot sector virus fixable? More importantly is it going to be
> expensive?
>
> I swear I was fully up to date with the McAfee updates - I can't
> understand how this has happened.
>
> All help both prior and further is very much appreciated.
>
> Carmen.
>
>
> --
> whoopidoo


Carmen -

And you've run the dell hdd diags. indicating no hardware problem?


Stew

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Could you let us know the exact "dirty" message? It sounds like the
partition dirty flag hasn't been reset.


"whoopidoo" <whoopidoo.1sjgjm@news.computerbanter.com> wrote in message
news:whoopidoo.1sjgjm@news.computerbanter.com...
>
> frequently evicted from my pc or being told I have dirty ntfs files and
> sometimes that I don't even have a hard drive)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"Brian K" <iibntgyea4 REMOVE_THIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
newsyVDe.54951$oJ.28015@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Could you let us know the exact "dirty" message? It sounds like the
> partition dirty flag hasn't been reset.
>
>


What concerns me is that he mentioned the hard drive is at times indicated
as "missing/not found". While this could be a data or power cable to the
drive or system board, it could also indicate an intermittently failing
drive.....

Running the extended read/write tests and SMART tests could help verify such
a failure.


Stew