infected HardDrive is not displaying folders - folders empty?

[DN BROKER]

infected HardDrive is not displaying folders - folders empty?

my friends hard drive got infected and im trying to fix it, why are the files missing? The OS is Windows XP - my computer is running Windows 7 - anyone here can help out?

 

[Theo]

Unplug it. On a clean system install a commercial antivirus. Connect drive as secondary device. Scan drive with antivirus.

 

[south]

Seen quite a bit of this lately. The files are probably hidden, but not gone. Theo's advice is good, but your files will still probably be hidden after a typical virus scan. It is most likely a rootkit. These also can hook into your networking protocols, or disable/modify the boot record of the drive. I prefer to start the computer in safe mode with networking, then a basic order would be as follows:

Start out with combofix.

Then you may still need to use unhide.exe

Also try to run tdssskiller on it, as well as following it all up with a full malwarebytes scan.

Unfortunately there are several varieties of these out there at the moment, and can be a challenge to completely remove. Even if you know what you're doing, it can easily take an hour or two to get rid of it all.

 

[DN BROKER]

South thanks for taking the time to pin point the solution, unhide.exe fixed the issue after I had the HD scanned and cured from trojans. I appreciate your support. Cheers

 

[south]

Cool. No problem.

You also should check that your IE security & privacy settings have not been changed by the virus, as well as your hosts file.