Darryl Collins
darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au
Wed Apr 25 02:58:41 CDT 2012
I should add I will check the drive for integrity - after reading your comments here drive failure is the leading suspect in this - and given this PC works pretty hard it is also quite possible - More likely than the virus angle at this point. cheers darryl Darryl Collins Whittle Consulting Pty Ltd Suite 8, 660 Canterbury Rd Surrey Hills, VIC, 3127 p: +61 3 9898 3242 m: +61 418 381 548 f: +61 3 9898 1855 e: darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au w: www.whittleconsulting.com.au ________________________________________ From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] on behalf of Darryl Collins [darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au] Sent: Wednesday, 25 April 2012 5:46 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Strange happenings (Rather OT, but Advice is appreciated) Thanks Guys, Yep, I do have current and active AV software, firewall etc, but of course it is possible wifey or me have downloaded something dumb by accident which has caused the issue. I downloaded some recovery software and the trial version looks promising - I have had to fly to another city today so not been able to do much. Hopefully tonight (oz time) I will be able to focus on the issue. If this software can recovery the files (and it looks like it can) I will fork up the mulla and restore it. Then back up all the current files, wipe the drive and do a clean install. I have loaded up my luggage allowance with backup drives, software disks and all that paraphernalia. Let you know how it goes. Cheers Darryl. Darryl Collins Whittle Consulting Pty Ltd Suite 8, 660 Canterbury Rd Surrey Hills, VIC, 3127 p: +61 3 9898 3242 m: +61 418 381 548 f: +61 3 9898 1855 e: darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au w: www.whittleconsulting.com.au ________________________________________ From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] on behalf of Hans-Christian Andersen [hans.andersen at phulse.com] Sent: Wednesday, 25 April 2012 3:41 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Strange happenings (Rather OT, but Advice is appreciated) It could possibly be hardware failure, but you normally wouldn't see files just disappearing, because that would mean the hardware problem is affecting the file system table, which would most likely render your system unbootable. Saying that, anything is possible, but I think it's more likely to be an NTFS MFT corruption caused by the operating system. This happened to me once - Windows is not bug free. Windows had nuked the MFT and all backup copies of it on the drive and I had to buy expensive recovery software to deep scan the drive for hints of any file it could find (which I luckily succeeded in). It could also be a virus/root kit, but whatever the case, you should definitely wipe the drive after backing up/recovering data before trusting it any further. It would also be best you do a proper scan of the disk using GRCs SpinRite or one of the many Linux distros that have utilities that scan your hd for defects before you trust it to store your data any further. If anything, I recommend you first boot your system into an Ubuntu live cd and check the HD file system to see if the files are still missing before proceeding with anything else. Best of luck - Hans Sent from my iPhone On 2012-04-24, at 7:01 PM, "Doug Murphy" <dw-murphy at cox.net> wrote: > It could be a rootkit, or a hardware problem. Before spending a lot of time > on rebuilding on that drive I'd check it. According to Steve Gibson, > http://www.grc.com/intro.htm, it isn't unusual for drives to start losing > sectors. I am far from a hardware expert by any means, but drives are cheap > enough so why rebuild on one that might have problems. > > -----Original Message----- > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Darryl Collins > Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 5:28 PM > To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving > Subject: [AccessD] Strange happenings (Rather OT, but Advice is appreciated) > > (xposted with Excel-L) > > Wow... > > I have a trusty HP desktop, which has worked flawlessly for about 4 years > now out of the box. This machine is on for most of the day and night, most > days and nights. > > It is basically the family PC in the lounge room. Last night I was at home > listening to music on iTunes thru the headphones when I noticed some of the > tracks in the list started to flag themselves as unavailable - What the??? > > Went to the desktop so I could check the folder and stacks of Icons are now > missing, - there were there not 10 mins ago. I check the folders - stacks of > files were missing. > > I immediately shut down the whole system, rebooted and the icons and files > were still missing. Ran a system restore which got back the programs and > their icons, but gobs of data had been deleted. > > Luckily I have pretty good backups of my data, and I have also found some > software that seems to be able to restore most (if not all of the) deleted > data from the existing drive. > > My question is WTF happened. It was almost like one of those virus's from > the mid 90's that kids used to write - You know "Delete all jpgs and mp3". > > Actually it was wiping a whole stack of stuff. > > I am pretty tempted to wipe the drive and reinstall from scratch. First I > will see if I can recover the system. > It is weird. Bookmarks from the brower, shortcut buttons etc were also all > wiped. > > Never seen anything like it... > Anyone got any suggestions? > > Cheers > Darryl. > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com