The bane of my existence lately: boot.pihar (on Windows 7). It took several days to manually eradicate (and cleanse) my HD. And, my computer was protected (firewall, anti-virus and malware), which served no purpose in preventing the "thing" from infecting my machine. There was no advance "warning," only that I knew my PC wasn't acting as it should, and I backed up important data and files. Shortly thereafter, my PC grinde to a halt, thanks to boot.pihar.

Just a cautionary word.

That malware is destrutive; it attacks booting and seeks personal data.

If I had to re-live most of this last week, and if I'd known about the destructive potential of the infection on the boot, I would have checked my virus defintions (whatever software app. is installed) and also run an external virus/malware check. (Sometimes, the virus protection installed on a HD defies detection/quarantine within the drive/s where the software is installed.)