My CD-RW's been screwed by someone - any help?

ixoy

I switched on my monitor to find it saying that my filses were ready to be written to my CD-RW. I thought, "Huh? What files?" and found some soft porn (which I most certainly didn't download). I thought "the fcuk?!" and deleted them. However now when I try and read the drive it just has an empty folder there for the drive. No matter what I put in - a CD-R or just a general CD - I still see this empty folder. No recognition - all I can do with my drive is use it as a cup holder currently.

Clearly it seems I was hax0red. I had - stupidly - forgot to turn my firewall back on recently after temporarily disabling it. So is this a virus I have or something done by an incredibly 733t buffon? And how to remedy it? Thanks!

Redshift

Run a full virus sweep with the latest definitions, if you're using XP try using the quick restore going back to before you disabled your firewall. and most importantly don't disable your firewall again;) or do what did and get a hardware one then there will be no need to disable it as it will be transparant to you.

ixoy

Tried system restore. No luck! Any other ideas on what to do?

seamus

Update your virus definitions files.

Download Adaware from www.lavasoftusa.com

ixoy

I've got Norton Antivirus - updated about a week ago. Complete scan - it detected nothing...:(

Redshift

You sure your drive isn't Borked? can you try it in another machine or try another drive in yours. you might also try deleting
from your hardware profile and allowing windows to redetect it, also check is it being detected properly in the bios and at POST.

ixoy

It's deteced at bootup alright, so I don't think it's a hardware problem. How would one check it at POST?
I might try deleting it now and letting Windows re-detect it...

.... which didn't work!!! What the heck?!

Redshift

Power On Self Test when your machine is booting before it loads the O/S it should confirm onscreen as it detects each drive.

See if it works in safe mode and also check if you can access it from dos if you have a WIN98 start up disk if not you can get the image in the internet just google for it that will rule out hardware if you can access it from DOS.

[/Edit] I done it for youHere

ixoy

Yeah, it's detected on POST bootup and I can see it from the BIOS startup page. I actually haven't enough floppies to get a proper startup disk - the web page says that I require 4.

It's so very odd and I googled and couldn't find any link to someone with a similiar problem. I assume that if the drive was actually broken that - when I clicked on it - I would get an error. Instead I'm just getting a blank directory listing, as if it's looking somewhere else. It leads me to believe it's been tinkered with then (especially as this originally had displayed some dodgy pornagraphic material).

I'm running XP Pro btw, which I should've mentioned earlier. The CD-RW is an AOPen CD-RW 2040 and I can't even find a bleedin' driver on their website - they only have a DOS driver. I've uninstalled the hardware and then run Add Hardware - Windows then located my new device and instantaneously finds the drivers for it and sets up the system. I check it's properties and everything is working fine apparently. System restore does nothing for it so I'm assuming whatever is tinkered with is working at some deeper level.

I'm at my wit, and energy's end, on this... Anyone any more ideas? Or is there even a drastic solution available (besides "format and reinstall" which I assume would work).

sceptre

Have you uninstalled and reinstalled just your buning software?

Dempsey

If ya suspect that you have a virus, never do a system restore. You should disable system restore until the virus has been deleted.

ixoy

I did the system restore after the virus scan, so it shouldn't have affected things.

I could try and re-install the burning software but I'm not sure that'd make a difference. With or without burning software the CD drive should still function.

There's a little thing I just recalled, which I'll have to check out when I came home. When I right-clicked on the properites of the picture that had "appeared" on my E:\ drive, it said that the file location was stored in something like C:\Documents and Settings\xxxx\Files to Burn\ - could someone have somehow digged into my Windows registry (or something) and told it to point the drive letter permanently at a folder location instead? I'll have to double-check when I get home to see if that's the case.

ixoy

Yup. My goddamn drive has been re-mapped. What was the CD-RW drive now points to the "CD Burning" folder that you can find nested inside your user profile in "Document and Settings". How was this remapped and how can I unmap it? I don't know where to look with regards to system processes and/or config files.