strange help

[Ditchmonk]

this is a friends server here is what is going on..any ideas



Will try to detail. Am running now, 98se, having changed from 2k Pro which also did not help at all.

On one, and one only so far, HD I have now three seperate files that can not be renamed, moved or deleted carrying strange file extensions and false bloated sizes. Any attempt to touch them gives the 1026 error. On occasion have had that and just changed from delete to recycle bin to flat out delete and once had to make sure all temp files were clear. This does it because the properties show humongeous file sizes like 412 gig, 362, and 349 gig respectively. They are, or were, 335 MB, plus 86 MB and 3.56 gig, again respectivly.

These files are all on the same HD and all were checked for virus, trojan, etc. All were DL'd and went fine where he wrote back exclaiming about the quality of a few of the Medical study books. Had no troubles unpacking or installing to his drive, via CD. Had also put to CD Photodiscs and that was one of them and mailed to another of our people in G. He got them fine and they are all fine he said as I wrote to worn him as soon as I saw the problem.

The Medical were no longer were needed after he got them so went to delete and the problem was there.

All file restore programs show unknown file, can not correct etc. There are no more rar files but instead are a series of folders, with at least as many hidden as well. changing the properties values does nothing either no matter the combo of read, archive or hidden.

Anyone have any ideas? It is a 160 gig drive and the tunes as well as other stuff is on it. I use that drive for private down and upload from a very select few and know for sure it is nothing they would have done if in fact it is some kind of hack. All system logs show no unknown access either.

Started out with one photodisc, several days later two new items there for checking out got hit and a couple days later the folder I had put there full of Medical stuff got changed. Have just started making copies of the files and tunes i want to try to save but am worried it will continue to grow as Deploy Center or any other Back-up program I try gives me an error to back up anything on that drive as again unknown. Also using Fix-IT or Reg heal gives critical error when they reach that HD, which is the last letter. (S)

Even as an act of futility suspected the MBR as i'd been having so much trouble with it losing the OS, I did a restore on it. Again no good.

Other thing that hopefully is of value is, that drive is the only one plugged into the MB. Promise cards are known to mess up the MBR as their BIOS wants to be number one. Tired of messing with the "No OS Found" I put the OS to the Promise card with a slave. In the second slot is another HD and slave and the 5th HD (which is the one in question now) went into the MB and so far it has been fine as far as the MBR goes anyway.




Here are a few of what the file names say they are, that look like mime to me, but really have no clue:

Att stu Medical Stuff sorted
-----------------------------
 _q>7.cï_
_?dÆå_.8_5
@+1~{I_/.f_¡
_?'E___o.>5
____?__v.vQÆ
___3ëDC. _÷
__¡ _Imb.÷w
__f.
__n.__
_mïî.5_
_ëô__xTc.___
_s_~£S»í.~à_
_x_ùë__Ö._ |ª__yå_._ö9
»_=_º__Æ.__R
¬__[î__.·_l
4_____C.__g
4¬~ï_C:.%_
dåU_[wJ.º_U
é_5_X_
_.
ô_
G_D9 [_.ú_
JÿW_B»_ª._T_
oJf__._û_
Qóyi@___.í_·
r#rk<_è.X_;
U4_
x_?_.__
V5_38gq.äZú
X_6____°.-í?
Z_s£?_



any thoughts is driving him nuts oh he has scanned with about every viru app and trojan scanner known

[kamikazee]

boot up in dos and go into the directory they are located in and delete them, has worked for me in the past.

[Ditchmonk]

thanks any idea what cuasing it? mbr..hdd?? the promise ....this is nice old guy and he is going boonkers on this

[kamikazee]

some how it seems like a couple of files are replicating themselves, not sure how tho.

[~*McoreD*~]

Hey mate, check BIOS to see if the HD are set to LBA.
If not, set it to LBA.

Once I got weird filenames like this, and I was about to format. But then in BIOS, the HD wasn't set as LBA (for reason it has changed). After it is back to normal LBA, everything was back to normal.

[Ditchmonk]

thxs guys..will pass the info along here is one input from another board which he posted at


I suspect its a corrupt mbr.While playing around,
I took your text, and converted it to hex..to ascii..to binary..to
ebcdic..and noticed as it converted it grew.(Also,
after a few conversions it just grew more complex..........)

So, as you had said you had problems, I think some lost chunks of files have just ballooned because of some fault with the
partition format/mbr or a earlier virus in memory.



any thoughts on this input? i am real interested in this not just to help my friend but for future probs
and you guys always have some good info

[richardc2000]

One question - can the files be moved?
Failing the LBA fix - deleting in DOS ( booting with a start up disk) is fast
It helps if all the files are in the one folder -especially with the weird names.

[Ditchmonk]

Quote:

One question - can the files be moved?
Failing the LBA fix - deleting in DOS ( booting with a start up disk) is fast
It helps if all the files are in the one folder -especially with the weird name

no was first thing tried was to move to a safe location...and at last contact with him was spreading to other folders...i had d/l one of the files to my box and was able to delete it from mine...ran every scanner known and was clean

i am starting to lean to the promise card and poss a via chipset...but have been unable to contact him to try forensic suite to try to repair the MBR with. he was trying to burn 100 gigs to cd to save so he is busy

thanks for the input

[kamikazee]

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-978403.html?tag=fd_top, Read this see if this is similar

[Grzyb]

I had a similar problem a few months back when my 160gb Hard Disk was corrupted.....Had all weird symbols and things as the file names & some file sizes were in gb's......

I was using Fat32 then....Format c: and then changed to NTFS....No problems since.....