how to remove the weird symbols that appear on my hard drive right click menu?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jaclyn b
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jaclyn b

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i have a portable hard drive that has been infected by a virus. a trojan i think. i already had it removed by scanning it with different antivirus softwares. i think the virus is removed now bec i don't see the symptoms anymore (ie: some of the folders becomes in hidded attribute and are replaced by a dummy folder but with an .exe as the file extension). However i stll cant open the drive by double clicking (the "open with" prompt pops up instead which shows me a list of programs). i can only open by right-clicking and hitting open on the menu. or choosing "open folder" when it autoplays when i plug the drive on the pc's usb port. also, when i right click the drive, on the menu, with the "open", "search", "autoplay", etc... there are these weird symbols that appear with them, that also leads to the "open with" prompt when i click them.

please help me, im getting very frustrated. don't want to reformat the drive just yet as there are important files saved in it. i can't back up on a pc bec i don't have one which can accomodate the size of all the files i have in my portable HD.

THANKS A LOT!
 
Hiya. When the virus attacked, it did some damage to one or more operating system files. What you can do, if you have your Windows XP disk, is go into the BIOS on start up and make your boot disk the CD or DVD ROM drive and then insert your XP disk, reboot and then launch into the installer mode. Run the REPAIR facility on the disk. You will need to log on as the ADMIN and use your password and then use the repair commands to fix the hard disk.

Here are some articles to look at to do this:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

You can also install the Recovery Console by reading this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

You will want to especially read the following section of this article:

"How to use the Recovery Console command prompt"

I would run a CHKDSK command first to check the entire hard disk out, this will take a while and require a reboot. After it is done, go back into the recovery console and use the following commands:

FIXMBR

This fixes the master boot record so that XP should then be able to see the drive normally.

Hope this helps!
 
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