Boot sector virus?

[Silvenon]

I know there's like tons of threads about viruses already, but this time I want to get rid of it without formatting my hard drives. So, what I know is that when I plugged in my friends MP4 player, my Avast told me that there's a virus. Then I plugged in the cellphone from the same friend and the warning popped out again. Yeah, yeah, he had a virus, I know, but I want to learn something about it. Is it a boot sector virus? My antivirius probably won't be able to find it, because it is in the boot sector, right? How do I scan the boot sector? How do I prevent this virus from spreading to boot sectors of removable media?

 

[DarkAngelAzazel]

I think Kaspersky gives the option to scan the boot sector :/

Or you just put in your windows install cd (I guess you are using xp?)

start the repair console with "r" and restore the original boot files with "bootcfg /rebuilt"

 

[The Reborn Devil]

Most anti-viruses should be able to scan that area. I know Norton does. It's basically the first thing it checks.

 

[Silvenon]

OS - Windows 7
Anti-virus - Avast

I tried to google "avast boot sector scan", but all it gives me is instructions on how to do a boot-time scan.

 

[Deathcom3s]

The Boot Sector is almost always the first thing any decent anti-virus scans.