Bad Virus Infection. Need Help Please !

[hknipp]

My laptop (Dell MS 1350 operating WinXP Pro, sp2) became infested with a very bad virus. The symptoms were as follows :
1. Many programs did not open anymore with an error message " . . .exe is not a valid win32 application".
2. No virus removal programs, incl. the Windows malicious virus removal tool, AVG and other "free" specific fix programs would open and run.
3. The computer does not open in Safe Mode anymore.
4. Windows "Last known good start" does not change the situation.
5. After two failed Windows repair installations (because of no Safe Mode start) the computer now continues to reboot without opening Windows. I was able to receive a blue screen error "Setup did not find any hard disk devices installed in your computer."

The Dell Diagnostic Utility shows no problems with the hard drive or other devices.
How can I get out of this dilemma without having to reformat my hard drive ?
Thank you very much for your help.

Hermann

[Bugbatter · Accepted solution]

There is very bad polymorphic file infector that is probably doing that.  Many security forums are seeing folks with this.  It is capable of infecting all the machine's executable files (.exe) and screensaver files (.scr). However, the problem is that the virus has a number of bugs in its code, and as a result, it may misinfect a proportion of executable files and therefore, the files are corrupted beyond repair. As of now, security experts suggest that the best way to fix this is the format and clean install, or destructive recovery if you have an OEM recovery partition as the best way to clean the infection and it is the best and safest way to return the machine to its normal working state.
I know that is not what you wanted to hear, but that is what we've been dealing with lately.

[hknipp]

Thank you for your quick reply.  I guess, that's what I need to do.  This would also give me the opportunity to install a XP/Vista dual-boot. 

Regards,

Hermann

[Bugbatter]

You're welcome. I'm sorry that I did not have better news, but it's good that you are looking at the positive aspect of the project.