How to format all the drives at once?

[tamilvendan]

Hi friends!

I have got this problem with my friend's computer. It is in the browsing centre where lot of people come and use the system and quite frequently it gets infected with viruses. Having an antivirus (free edition though, avg) doesn't help much. It leads to slowing down of the system and non functioning as well which affects the income.

When i visited him i tried to locate the virus with hijackthis and i did it successfully but the removing part was not successful even with antivirus , delete doctor. sometimes the virus doesn't allow hijackthis to run. With no other option left out i had to reinstall the os ( win xp)

While installing xp, it formats the drive onto which it installs the os i.e C: drive alone. There is no option to format other drives as well. If the virus is stored in other drives it can reinfect again. Actually that's what happened in this system.

So my question is how to clean install xp os by completely formatting the whole disk? I created a MS DOS bootable floppy disk and with that i gave commands format c: on booting but it failed to do so.

My friend prefers to format and reinstall over going through all that diagnosis which is time consuming and reduces the productive hours. Installing takes only 40 mins.

Any suggestions on formatting the drives.

Thanks in advance

[ravi_9793]

Boot using windows XP CD..and format the drives.

[Sparsh007]

Right click on the drives and press format

[tamilvendan]

Originally Posted by ravi_9793

Boot using windows XP CD..and format the drives.

As i wrote before while booting with win xp cd it formats the drive on which it will install the os. There is no option to format other drives .Or is there any?

Originally Posted by Sparsh007

Right click on the drives and press format

By doing so you can only format drives other than c: . It cannot format the c drive also. I asked for a solution for formatting all the drives atonce.

[skghosh44]

I think when u boot from Win Xp CD there is a option on to which the OS will be installed also it will show all the partition of the HDD. 1st you delete all the partition and recreate partition and format one by one all the partition and finally install the os in the C: drive.

[ravi_9793]

Originally Posted by tamilvendan

As i wrote before while booting with win xp cd it formats the drive on which it will install the os. There is no option to format other drives .Or is there any?

you can format other drives also.But for that U need to delete that drive first..and than again create the drive...and format it.

[Saharika]

i am asking to all
normally ..whats possibility of the virus coming back (from other drives) once we have formatted the c drive...
actually when the problem files(system) are in drive c and once it has been formatted and clear..the virus are wipe out once the av is installed and scanned...
the logic is that the things thats makes virus deadly is self replication..it may need atleast some files from system to replicate...so once it is gone...
so some virus are not able to replicate and are over when av deletes it..

second possibilty may be the virus infecting other drives may not cause that much problem that ..the virus that infects the system drive..

so are these assumption true..can virus come back after format as well
(suppose they are not boot sector infecting virus)

[NucleusKore]

To format all the drives you can use GParted
Its a bootable/live cd and has a nice graphical interface.
Better you boot and delete all the partitions with GParted, reboot, and then again boot from GParted live cd and make new partitions

Now viruses in browsing centres is something you can't do much about. I had suggested the following for a friend of mine and it helped him a lot in his business:
1. Disconnect from LAN/Internet
2. Delete all partitions as above and make new ones
3. Install Windows, antivirus and all other software that you need (office, messenger, etc.)
4. Patch with latest Autopatcher (August 2007 Core and Update)
5. Make a bootable disc image with Norton Ghost or any other imaging software and burn to a cd/dvd. My friend uses Ghost.

Now connect to LAN/Internet. In future restoring the system will take 15 to 20 minutes, with all software that you installed

[tamilvendan]

Thanks a lot for the info. That was quite informative.

One more question.

Is it possible to format the drives by booting from the MS DOS bootable floppy disk. I tried but failed.

Originally Posted by Saharika

i am asking to all
normally ..whats possibility of the virus coming back (from other drives) once we have formatted the c drive...
actually when the problem files(system) are in drive c and once it has been formatted and clear..the virus are wipe out once the av is installed and scanned...
the logic is that the things thats makes virus deadly is self replication..it may need atleast some files from system to replicate...so once it is gone...
so some virus are not able to replicate and are over when av deletes it..

second possibilty may be the virus infecting other drives may not cause that much problem that ..the virus that infects the system drive..

so are these assumption true..can virus come back after format as well
(suppose they are not boot sector infecting virus)

I dont know about the mechanism of viruses but from my experience i can say yes. After formatting and renstalling the os on the c drive i opened one folder in some other drive without knowing what it is and that's it, virus came back again as the system showed the same symptoms. All those hours of reinstalling became a waste.

[NucleusKore]

Viruses may be coming back from
1. Other partitions
2. Other PCs

In cybers it is a practice to share all the drives of all PCs on the network with read/write permissions and this is a bad practice. It is better to have the pc connected with the printer, scanner share a single folder with all PCs, with read/write permissions. Any file to be printed or burned or whatever can just be copied to this folder. Other PCs too may access these files if required.

[Saharika]

Originally Posted by NucleusKore

Viruses may be coming back from
1. Other partitions
2. Other PCs

In cybers it is a practice to share all the drives of all PCs on the network with read/write permissions and this is a bad practice. It is better to have the pc connected with the printer, scanner share a single folder with all PCs, with read/write permissions. Any file to be printed or burned or whatever can just be copied to this folder. Other PCs too may access these files if required.

does it mean that if the computer is infected and we think of format ..own should always go with FULL format. all drives.....

i have seen many system drive format (c only) working and removing virus...is it all bcoz of nature of virus...?


if the all virus were such ..own should always format if s/he think of formating to get rid of virus is it?

[sivarap]

reframe your question...dosen't make anysense.....

If i understand what you are askin, formatting the entire disk does get rid of the viruses........ but when you connect that pc again to an infected system which has write permission to the newly formatted system, virus comes back....

hope you know that frquent formatting increases the risk of bad sectors....

[NucleusKore]

What I have mentioned is something to be done once to get the image on a cd/dvd so that system restoration becomes fast. My friend used to format and reinstall in the frequency of roughly once in 2-3 months. While it is said that repeated formatting spoils your hard drive, so do viruses that run read write cycles continuously in the background. So you do not have much of a choice. You cannot restrict users too much, they'll go to another cyber. Formatting is not a replacement for a good antivirus.