A boot sector virus is a type of virus that infects the Master Boot Record (MBR) or DOS Boot Sector of a computer’s hard drive. This type of virus can be difficult to remove because it resides in the sectors that are used to start your Operating System. A simple operating system replacement may leave the virus to continue its evil ways.

As a professional, you can use software on a CD-ROM or USB drive to scan the infected drive and fix the MBR. For Windows 10 or 11, you can use the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) to troubleshoot and repair startup issues. To access WinRE, restart your computer while holding down the shift key. From there, you can select “Troubleshoot” and then “Advanced options” to access the recovery tools.

You can also find out which company manufactures the infected HDD and see if they have a utility that will do a low-level format. This part is important because it deletes everything from your hard drive so that no one can get it back, including the virus.

After running the formatting utility provided by the HDD manufacturer, if there are still errors booting the OS, you can reinstall the operating system. And remember, it’s important to use trusted software to remove the virus or else you will be in more trouble (if that software is infected).

Also see my blog post: Boot Sector Virus Removal