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I've now had this problem twice on two different computers (both
running XP Pro). The first time was several months (to more than a
year) ago, and I wrote it off as a fluke. But, today it happened again!
Computer was running fine save for a network issue with my router, but I
decided to reboot simply because it had been running for several days.
Upon reboot, I received the following message:

NTLDR missing ... blah blah ...

What happens is, all individual files in the root C: get deleted.
Folders are untouched, and subfolders and files within those folders are
untouched. It is just the files that are in the root of C: ... NTLDR,
NTDETECT.COM, BOOT.INI, etc ... and not just Windows system files ...
*.log, *.xml, etc are all deleted too.

The first time this happened, I actually noticed they were gone
while I was using the system. I stupidly rebooted to see what would
happen, and quickly found out. Now, though, I do daily backups, and was
able to pull the files from last night's backup.

But, I would love to know what the cause of this particular issue
is. There doesn't seem to be a virus or trojan that behaves in this
manner, so I don't think it is that (plus AV scans are negative); and,
it is not something that happens at bootup ... it happens while Windows
is running.

Anyone have any ideas? TIA!

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:01:38 +0000, mhicaoidh Has Frothed:

> I've now had this problem twice on two different computers (both
> running XP Pro). The first time was several months (to more than a year)
> ago, and I wrote it off as a fluke. But, today it happened again!
> Computer was running fine save for a network issue with my router, but I
> decided to reboot simply because it had been running for several days.
> Upon reboot, I received the following message:
>
> NTLDR missing ... blah blah ...
>
> What happens is, all individual files in the root C: get deleted.
> Folders are untouched, and subfolders and files within those folders are
> untouched. It is just the files that are in the root of C: ... NTLDR,
> NTDETECT.COM, BOOT.INI, etc ... and not just Windows system files ...
> *.log, *.xml, etc are all deleted too.
>
> The first time this happened, I actually noticed they were gone
> while I was using the system. I stupidly rebooted to see what would
> happen, and quickly found out. Now, though, I do daily backups, and was
> able to pull the files from last night's backup.
>
> But, I would love to know what the cause of this particular issue
> is. There doesn't seem to be a virus or trojan that behaves in this
> manner, so I don't think it is that (plus AV scans are negative); and, it
> is not something that happens at bootup ... it happens while Windows is
> running.
>
> Anyone have any ideas? TIA!

Either a malicious process or person is deleting them.
--
Pierre Salinger Memorial Hook, Line & Sinker, June 2004

COOSN-266-06-25794

Taking a moment's reflection, Meat Plow mused:
|
| Either a malicious process or person is deleting them.

Honestly, I don't think it's either. I know it is not a person
deleting them because I am the only one that uses the computer. AV,
Ad-Aware, and Spybot are all up-to-date and find nothing. Also, if it
were a malicious process, I would expect it to happen *much* more
frequently. But, like I said, I saw it once on my old system, and just
now (after 3 years) on this system. Once I replaced the files,
everything was fine again.