Re: Strange disappearance (at least to me)

On 1/5/2012 12:12 PM, The Seabat wrote:
Howdy: I have a three year old computer that I built for a neighbor
lady running Windows XP SP3. She called yesterday and said that it
would not boot and kept saying that it could not find the hal.dll
file. I went over and tried to reinstall it using the Windows CD and
Repair Console. No joy.
I then took the unit home and pulled the hard drive and hooked it up
to my 'puter and there were not ANY Windows or system files/folders to
be found on this hard drive! The only thing on the hard drive was a
storage folder of pictures, the Programs Files and one or two junk
folders.
She claims she did nothing but let it go into sleep mode and then try
and bring it out the next day. I believe her, Marie doesn't mess with
the computer at all, she just calls me.
Is there some virus, trojan, worm that I have not heard about that can
do this to a machine?? I wiped the hard drive and ran some tests on it
and it seems fine. At least good enough shape not to make Windows
completely disappear!!
I'm completely reinstalling all OS and software now, but sure would
like to know what the hell happened. I am open to any suggestions,
please! Any more info needed, just let me know.



Unfortunately, it is ridiculously easy to make a simple piece of malware to do just that. Youtube is loaded with free tutorials.

You need to teach your neighbor to pay attention to the extensions on files sent to her via email, or downloaded from the web. The simplest malware just use .bat and .exe files that have to be started by the user.

Not saying this is definitely what happened, but the knowledge is important for everyone regardless.
.

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