My son's computer was attacked by VMM 32 virus.  Unable to boot
computer.  Have a start up disk on CD Rom.  How do I boot from CD Rom?
 I'm a Mac person, his is a AMD chip, Millenium version operating
system.  A lot of his homework for the year is on his hard drive so we
don't want to have to reinitialize the hard drive if we can avoid it. 
Any clues?  Thanks   Claudia

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Request for Question Clarification by morris-ga on 03 Jun 2002 11:27 PDT

What is the computer brand and how is the recovery CD labeled? All
Microsoft CDs have been bootable since Win98. They won't reformat the
hard drive without your responding "yes" to a "this operation will
destroy all data on the drive" type prompt. If you put in the CD and
it still does a C drive boot failure, you'll need to access the
systems CMOS (depends on brand, but the DEL key or the F1 key tapped
before the operating system starts loading normally gets you in) and
change the boot order so it looks for the CD BEFORE the hard drive.
Well, I guess I put most of the answer in the clarification, so good
luck. BTW, couldn't find any reference to a VMM 32 virus, you might
want to post the exact error message you are getting or what the virus
doctor turned up.

Hi ckwillow,

Here is what you need to do:

1. Make sure the CD is in the drive
2. Restart your system and depending on your CMOS brand you will need
to hit either F7 or DEL key repeatedly as soon as the computer starts
up until you enter a CMOS menu. If the windows splash screen appears,
you did not trigger the menu and should restart and try again.
3. Within the menu you will be looking for an option called "Boot
Sequence" or something to that extent.
4. Change that option (usually using PGDN/PGUP keys) so that the list
of devices shows CDROM as the first item.
5. Save and exit (usually F10)
6. Your computer will be restarted and will boot using the newly
defined sequence.

From here you shouldn't have any problems as long as the CD that you
have is "bootable", meaning that the computer can find information on
the CD when the computer starts that will support its operation. If
this information is not found then it will move to the next device in
the list and try to boot from there.

Just for the record, no information was readily available on the VMM32
virus to which you referred. Sometimes a single virus can go by many
names, so this may be one of its "aliases".

Best of luck! If you are still having problems please post a
clarification and I will walk you through it :)

answerguru-ga

VMM 32 is not a virus.

VMM 32 is a gigantic driver file, and your computer won't start
because the file is corrupted (it happens.  It's Windows.  And it's
totally fixable.)

Here's an explanation of VMM32:

Webopedia - VMM32
[ http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/VMM32_vxd.html ]

The Truth About VMM32
[ http://www.infinisource.com/techfiles/vmm32.html ]

(I Googled on "VMM32" and got several pages of results.) 

You should be just fine with answerguru's instructions, no worries.

missy-ga <--has had this problem.

i have had this problem as well. it stemmed from a problem in the
antivirus software i was using actually. norton antivirus goes haywire
(for some reason) and starts thinking that some programs are infected
with viruses when in fact they are not. a reboot solves that problem,
however it does not solve the aftermath. one of the files it often
tries to delete as "virussed" is vmm32, a file critical to the
operation of your computer. after norton deletes this file, a full
reinstall of the operating system is often required, as your pc will
not longer boot to windows. this has happened to me twice.

Ok.. a few things about this.  vmm32 is the 32 bit version of the
Virtual Memory Manager.  Here is what microsoft has on this issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q191874

The other thing you can try is reinstalling windows on it's own
directory.  You WILL loose shortcuts and installed programs will not
work.  However, the data on your hard drive (e.g Word Documents, Saved
Games, Pictures, movies, mp3's etc) will still remain on your hard
drive.  What you need to do is just reinstall windows over the windows
you have now.  That will at least enable you to recover your
information.  Another option is to install a second drive.  You will
install windows on the second drive and have your previous drive be a
slave drive (I can step you through this if you'd like me to, just add
another comment here).  When you do this, windows will see the second
drive (With your data) and you will be able to move the data around
(Copy it to a CD or to a floppy).  The other thing I don't know from
your questions is: Is it the VMM32.VXD file that has been deleted, or
the directory?  What is the exact error message and what was the last
thing that your son did to the computer?

I would Buy a new hard drive 2 take place of the other 2 make sure u
don't loose your important data on u other 1. When u install the os on
the new Hard Drive, then add u other 1 and scan it 4 viruses.