Possible Virus?

[Sylthos]

A couple days ago my hard drive crashed, or so I thought. I was in a rush at that time and didn't think too much of it, not to mention that my computer had been on for the entire day.

So this morning I started my computer up and everything was running fine for a couple hours. The first two things I did was run a full system virus scan and then backed up all essential documents and files and transferred them to an external hard drive.

All good right? I went to go eat breakfast and when I came back my computer had restarted and was getting the error "Boot Drive Error".
No sweat, popped in my Windows CD and discovered that I could not find the hard drive on partition list! I was a little flustered and restarted.

This is where I notice that my Sata drive have had it's name changed.

It's new name was:
iHas Xtrc B aL0L

This threw up several red flags and I remembered that the day my computer had crashed that my network was unusually stuffed with network activity, like someone was downloading and uploading to the max capacity of my network. Also, steam alerted me to the fact that my account was accessed on another computer that day. My network logs showed that two unidentifed computers had accessed my wireless network for just a couple hours and coincided with my network slow down. My network is password protected and has it's broadcast unnamed.

Before coming to work my hard drive was working just fine but still had it's name changed.

Is it possible to have a virus and/or hacker do that or am I just being paranoid?

[matthewfarmery]

after doing a bit of quick googling, the problem could be with the cable, or that the cable isn't correctly seated in either the motherboard or HD, I personally hate sata cables, while the old IDE cables might have been more cumbersome, at least once they are in, they pretty much stay in, especailly a good cable

the sata cables are tiny, and they don't always stay in, and I really hate the sata power cable, flimsy and horrible

so my first advise is, check all cables, both to the MB and HD, double check both power and sata cables,

I don't think a trojan / virus can do this, but don't quote me on that, while viruses can effect the boot sector of a drive, stopping the drive from been acessed, the name of the drive will be in the firmware, so unless you have updated the firmware of the drive, then maybe, but I think it could be a cable issue

also you could try resetting the CMOS, which holds all the bios info, but I would check cables then if that doesn't help, reset the CMOS, your MB manual should tell you how, if you have one,

hope that helps

[Morkonan]

...It's new name was:
iHas Xtrc B aL0L..

Are you sure that is your SATA drive and not a CD/DVD drive that has somehow gotten itself reassigned?

[Tracker001]

Also, steam alerted me to the fact that my account was accessed on another computer that day

Does steam have a "Login Security" thingy like the Egosoft Formus do ?
Were you can check the login IP history .

[Geggo]

it is possible to affect hard drive firmware though I would imagine it's not exactly easy.

I would check the drive with some bootable diagnostic tool, preferably from the manufacturer but hddscan or something similar should do the job.

[Sylthos]

Thanks for all the replies. It turns out that yes I was just paranoid and everything was just a coincidence. My video card was playing tennis with my sata cables. Whoops.

[Morkonan]

Thanks for all the replies. It turns out that yes I was just paranoid and everything was just a coincidence. My video card was playing tennis with my sata cables. Whoops.

Was the drive designation problem as I suspected, and your CD/DVD drive had acquired your SATA's mount due to a problem with the SATA?

[matthewfarmery]

well I wasn't too far off really myself, I did suggest double checking the cables first

but glad you got it sorted

[Sylthos]

Morkonan:
My CD/DVD drive is IDE and not sata. Unfortunately my computer now boots up too fast for me to determine if my drives have aquired new names.

matthewfarmery:
Yeah you weren't. I sat for half an hour watching my sata cables hoping it was as you said. That's when I notice my video card vibrating and tossing my cables around.

That for some reason sounds dirty.

[Morkonan]

Morkonan:
My CD/DVD drive is IDE and not sata. Unfortunately my computer now boots up too fast for me to determine if my drives have aquired new names...

My meaning was in the "Mount" being logical drive designation, not actually a physical mount.

[Sylthos]

As in

C:\ <--- Being Hard Drive
D:\ <--- Being CD\DVD Drive

Being switched upped?

If that's the case, no.

If that's not, I may being getting a few terms mixed up here, obviously.