Hi guys. Sorry if what follows below is confusing. Not sure how to word it...
I'm hoping you can help me with a problem I've had. I took a SATA drive out of a freebie machine a friend had given me so that I could scan the drive as it was showing signs of infection when booted in its original PC. I connected this infected drive inside my PC as a second SATA drive. My dual-boot PC has a slightly unusual set-up, in that it has a single SATA drive with XP Pro 32-bit on it, as well as two old SCSI drives connected via a PCI SCSI card. One of these SCSI drives also has XP on it, albeit without any virus/spyware protection, as I use it for gaming (never over the net though).
A day or two ago, I disconnected both SCSI drives so it was easier to tell which labels in the My Computer window referred to the disc to be scanned, and which to my existing SATA drive. However, having connected the infected SATA drive and run a scan (which removed 10-15 infections), the MBR of the scanned disc appears to have been rewritten as a dual-boot disc now that I've put it back in its original PC. In addition, clicking on programme icons on the desktop of the scanned HDD produces the message, "Which programme do you want to use to open this file?", which I didn't get before.
If I connect a disc (with a Windows OS on it) to be scanned inside my PC via SATA, can its MBR be rewritten by my PC? I'm sure Avast hasn't caused this problem, but it's so much quicker to scan an infected machine through a second PC rather than trying to regain control of the HDD in its original PC. Do I need to have a single-boot system to avoid this problem, or should I connect any HDD to be scanned through an external USB enclosure rather than directly via SATA?
Any help much appreciated.
Cheers, Jon.
