I was kinda hoping to take a "nostalgia tack" on this one. Two cents: Me, I came up with a Linux solution. Ntfs-3g, ntfs-fix, and some basic python. It booted and did the trick without typing anything, but it required disabling secure boot and changing to ahci. It was late, it was linux, it required touching BIOS (firmware, rather) settings, and it suffered from an incurable case of "not our idea." In short: I crashed and burned. I'm not even going to pretend I get an opinion on this one.
Fiction: For the purposes of the FreeDos forum, I'd like to pretend I had a magic wand! And, if I had said magic wand, how many times would I waive it? Three. Firstly, to have BIOS back again. Secondly, for plain vanilla, un-bitlockered Fat32. Thirdly... I don't know. I'm not qualified, I'll leave that as an exercise for hardware experts. RAID? Disk controller? Not sure, maybe not enough. I might be shaking that wand all over the place. Nostalgia: Yet, finally, after waiving the magic wand a few times, I actually can see fixing this with FreeDos. A boot disk, better yet PXE, batch script to remove the affected files, very quick, very fast. Fictional.... but easy. Thus, my nostalgia for a very small, quick OS that you can quickly boot to get in and fix things. And, in the case of FreeDos, said OS is open source and free. On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 8:43 AM userbeitrag--- via Freedos-user < freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > On July 25 2024, 11:50, Mateusz Viste wrote via Freedos-user: > > On 25/07/2024 10:44, userbeitrag--- via Freedos-user wrote: > >> Since DOS was vulnerable to boot viruses, it was AFAIK only necessary to > >> access a (floppy) disk. DOS would always execute the virus if it was in > >> the boot sector (be it a VBR or MBR). A simple "A:" at the prompt might > >> have been enough, depending on the DOS version and the TSRs. > > > > There is no VBR on a floppy, because there is no partition table - only > > a boot sector. > > Well... > > https://www.cs.williams.edu/~jannen/teaching/s19/cs333/readings/FAT/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system-Wikipedia.pdf > > I cite: > "On non-partitioned devices, such as floppy disks, the Boot Sector (VBR) > is the first sector (logical sector 0 with physical CHS address 0/0/1 or > LBA address 0)." > > Yes, this comes from Wikipedia, so it might be wrong. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_boot_record > > I cite: > "A volume boot record (VBR) (also known as a volume boot sector, a > partition boot record or a partition boot sector) is a type of boot > sector introduced by the IBM Personal Computer. It may be found on a > partitioned data storage device, such as a hard disk, or an > unpartitioned device, such as a floppy disk, ..." > > The Starman's Realm lists floppy boot sectors under "VBR (Volume Boot > Record) and OS Boot Sectors"... > https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/#Flop > > The boot sector of floppy disks and hard disk partitions seems to be an > integral part of the filesystem FAT, as it is also sometimes called the > "FAT header". > > See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system > > With most Microsoft filesystems, if you compare the VBR on a hard disk > partition to the one on a floppy drive, the only difference mostly > really is the filesystem: FAT12 for floppies, or FAT16/FAT32/NTFS for > hard disk partitions. In any case, the boot sector (or partition sector, > in case of the VBR on a hard disk partition) contains, aside from some > filesystem information, a BIOS Paramenter Block (BPB) and a signature > (the famous 0xAA55). The one exception is the original PC DOS 1.0/1.1 > boot sector, which did not yet have a BPB or a signature > (https://thestarman.pcministry.com/DOS/ibm100/Boot.htm)... > > > The boot sector is loaded by the BIOS at boot time, never > > by DOS. Hence no, accessing a boot-sector-infected diskette would not > > make the virus activate. One would need to actually boot from this > > diskette. > > I'm unsure about this... > > https://www.kaspersky.co.uk/resource-center/definitions/boot-sector-virus > I cite: > "An infected floppy disk or USB drive connected to a computer will > transfer when the drive's VBR is read, then modify or replace the > existing boot code." > > But again, maybe I remember this wrong. Maybe every boot virus needed a > dropper... > > Greetings, > A. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
_______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
