BleepingComputer.com: External Hard Drive Killed by AntiVirus

Today's Avira scan reported both 'Master boot sector HD1' and 'Boot sector 'L:\'' contained 'BOO/Whistler.A' [virus] and deleted it. External drive (L) no longer appears in windows explorer, but does appear in Disk Management as an unallocated drive with no letter.

If this was a legitimate virus, it has long resided in my external drive for without any issues or detection on prior scans. Can anyone suggest how I might restore the drive without losing data? My OS is Windows XP. Thanks very much for any advice.

Hello and welcome to the forum!

Sounds like the partition may have been deleted. Try initializing the drive in disk management.
Unfortunately, if the partition on the drive has been deleted, so has the data that was on it.

Eyesee, I appreciate your response. I restored the partition with a partition recovery wizard. Everything is back to normal, and no data was lost. I am convinced that a false detection by Avira caused the problem, so I am considering whether to switch to another anti-virus.

Tamlin, on 16 July 2011 - 11:06 AM, said:

Not necessarily: It may well have been a valid detection.

Did Avira quarantine (rather than delete) by any chance? Do you still have the relevant "deletion" in Avira's virus "vault". It may be possible to examine it and confirm one way or another whether the detection was legitimate or not.