rolypolycat
January 19th, 2009, 04:23 AM
Hello!
My reasonably savvy computer friend (with hardware, anyway), took apart my old, nonworking computer, and put the extra hard drive he found in it, one I'd completely forgotten was even in it, into a new tower with what I believe was an Ameritrend? bios on the motherboard. It had originally had Win XP on it, but there was nothing there now. When I attempted to install xubuntu, it would start with the screen asking what I wished to install, run some info on the screen so fast I couldn't see it, go blank, then- start all over again with the install screen. I tried a command line install; this time, it got to initrd, then restarted. When I ran yet another Ubuntu disk from Linux Format magazine, it started up with the usual screen asking what sort of install I wanted, then restarted again and again.
I had another 160 gig drive with a working linux install on it. I know the hardware would have been different, since it was taken from the trashed computer. This time, it kept giving me a GRUB menu. I'd make a choice, it would start to boot- then back to the grub menu again.
Here's where it gets even more peculiar. When Rich, my computer buddy, took the tower and drive home, and plugged the 80 gig drive into 2 of his machines, it screwed them up. It wiped out the ports, is what he said. These were Windows xp machines. He also discovered it trashed ports on the motherboard on the tower he gave me. Rich said it was a "chimera" that is, it merged code from win xp and linux, and screwed things up. He also said when he tracked down the virus code, it was barely 100kb long, but was designed to ruin the ports.
I take what he says here with a bit of confusion, because he's not that familiar with linux.
All the same, I know the disks I used to install linux were perfectly good, because they're the ones I've used time and again to install ubuntu on my previous 2 machines. There were no error messages when the install ran, or at least, none that could be seen. It just kept on looping. And Rich says the serial ports, and some others , are trashed.
So, anyone have any idea what sort of virus, malware, or just plain screwed-up mess is on this machine? And how to repair the missing ports? I've been using linux for the past 5 years, and I've never seen anything like this.
Thanks in advance for any info on this!
My reasonably savvy computer friend (with hardware, anyway), took apart my old, nonworking computer, and put the extra hard drive he found in it, one I'd completely forgotten was even in it, into a new tower with what I believe was an Ameritrend? bios on the motherboard. It had originally had Win XP on it, but there was nothing there now. When I attempted to install xubuntu, it would start with the screen asking what I wished to install, run some info on the screen so fast I couldn't see it, go blank, then- start all over again with the install screen. I tried a command line install; this time, it got to initrd, then restarted. When I ran yet another Ubuntu disk from Linux Format magazine, it started up with the usual screen asking what sort of install I wanted, then restarted again and again.
I had another 160 gig drive with a working linux install on it. I know the hardware would have been different, since it was taken from the trashed computer. This time, it kept giving me a GRUB menu. I'd make a choice, it would start to boot- then back to the grub menu again.
Here's where it gets even more peculiar. When Rich, my computer buddy, took the tower and drive home, and plugged the 80 gig drive into 2 of his machines, it screwed them up. It wiped out the ports, is what he said. These were Windows xp machines. He also discovered it trashed ports on the motherboard on the tower he gave me. Rich said it was a "chimera" that is, it merged code from win xp and linux, and screwed things up. He also said when he tracked down the virus code, it was barely 100kb long, but was designed to ruin the ports.
I take what he says here with a bit of confusion, because he's not that familiar with linux.
All the same, I know the disks I used to install linux were perfectly good, because they're the ones I've used time and again to install ubuntu on my previous 2 machines. There were no error messages when the install ran, or at least, none that could be seen. It just kept on looping. And Rich says the serial ports, and some others , are trashed.
So, anyone have any idea what sort of virus, malware, or just plain screwed-up mess is on this machine? And how to repair the missing ports? I've been using linux for the past 5 years, and I've never seen anything like this.
Thanks in advance for any info on this!