[NBLUG/talk] Looking for a bootable disk editor

[Bruce Schadel]

I'm not a sysadmin of any denomination and have no business on this list 
but I've been lurking ever since an installfest a few years ago.

I work in a semiconductor fab and have engineering responsibility for an 
instrument with a built-in and not upgradeable, hardwarewise, PC 
controller. Someone on the previous watch had managed to migrate from 
Windows 3.11 to Windows 98. I sent the instrument out for repair about 6 
months ago and it came back with 3.11 again. Some calibration function 
didn't work under '98. But, it now has the NYB boot-sector virus. By all 
accounts, this beastie is pretty benign, seeking mainly to replicate and 
spread itself. However, the application is crashing regularly and it 
seems the first thing to do is get rid of the virus.

I did a web search and some sources suggest I just run FDISK /MBR to 
rewrite the master boot record. Another source says the virus/worm will 
have copied absolute sector 1 to sector 17. It's not clear whether the 
bug will have overwritten the partition table at the end of sector 1. If 
it has, restoring the MBR only will render the PC unbootable.

So, I'm looking for a bootable disk editor, preferably free, that will 
allow me to inspect sectors 1 and 17 and copy portions of one to the 
other if need be. I thought I'd find an open-source utility to do that, 
but no joy. I downloaded the trial version of Acronis Disk Director 
Suite 10.0 which contains 'way more than I want but it appears that the 
disk editor component is read-only.

Any ideas? I can boot from a floppy or CD.

BTW, the guy who gave me the virus left the company he was working for 
shortly afterward.

Thanks,
--Bruce--