Virus farked my PC

[JohnnyD]

Any time you get a virus, your safest bet is to back up all your data and do a clean install.

It's a pain in the rear but is the most effective method for truly cleaning your system and avoid all the headaches that come after an infection, like what you're dealing with.

[eastendlu]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

Any time you get a virus, your safest bet is to back up all your data and do a clean install.

It's a pain in the rear but is the most effective method for truly cleaning your system and avoid all the headaches that come after an infection, like what you're dealing with.

I agree with this. I setup a nice backup system i have it image my pc every week and put it in an external 2 terabyte hd its called Acronis.

[FormerUser]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

Any time you get a virus, your safest bet is to back up all your data and do a clean install.

It's a pain in the rear but is the most effective method for truly cleaning your system and avoid all the headaches that come after an infection, like what you're dealing with.

Huh?!

What if you back up the virus?Damn fine chance after running your antivirus and several different malware programs that some remnant of the virus still exists and then you might still back it up!

So you're saying run all the security apps then backup personal files and then reinstall windows and then reinstall months(if not years)worth of upgrades?That's a solution

[Raven]

i attack the virus
i am the anti virus program

all ya have to do is isolate the "when"
and search it out that way
looking for strange .exe files

searching with asterisk (wild card) *.exe

anything that you have no knowledge of

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by basswipe

Huh?!

What if you back up the virus?Damn fine chance after running your antivirus and several different malware programs that some remnant of the virus still exists and then you might still back it up!

So you're saying run all the security apps then backup personal files and then reinstall windows and then reinstall months(if not years)worth of upgrades?That's a solution

Now a days, a computer virus typically comes from websites that have been compromised. It then infects system files, changes configurations, screws with system files and opens up holes that could be exploited even after multiple AV and malware programs confirm it is gone. For the most part, gone are the days that you download a Word file that executes a macro and infects all other word files. If you properly scan the files you back up, chances are extremely slim of actually backing up the virus and even if you do, chances are also slim that you'll execute it again.

What does it matter if there are "months (if not years) worth of upgrades"? Upgrades to what, Windows? Run Windows Update a couple times and you're caught up within an hour.

I typically do a clean install every 6-8 months or whenever my computer starts acting flakey. Takes about 3 hours from the time I put the Win7 disk in, until I'm back to where I need to be with all programs installed and updated, along with all my files transferred.

[striperman36]

JD has a good plan of action, I also do this every 6-8 on my work machine, the home machine about twice as long, I have to pry my son off of the drivers seat.

The home one is more locked down, and we've still gotten nailed with several malware hits from scam sites he's unintentionally hit.

[FormerUser]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

What does it matter if there are "months (if not years) worth of upgrades"? Upgrades to what, Windows? Run Windows Update a couple times and you're caught up within an hour.

I typically do a clean install every 6-8 months or whenever my computer starts acting flakey. Takes about 3 hours from the time I put the Win7 disk in, until I'm back to where I need to be with all programs installed and updated, along with all my files transferred.

Again...huh?

You will actually do a clean install of windows every 6-8 months?To avoid a "flakey" computer?And you'll wait 3 hours to do so?

And you'll do all this to avoid a virus that your antivirus program should've taken care of to begin with?

Again HUH?!?!?!?!?!

Btw windows update takes a "little" more than an hour to catch up after a clean install,in some cases more than a day in your own admission at least three hours.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by basswipe

Again...huh?

You will actually do a clean install of windows every 6-8 months?To avoid a "flakey" computer?And you'll wait 3 hours to do so?

And you'll do all this to avoid a virus that your antivirus program should've taken care of to begin with?

Again HUH?!?!?!?!?!

Btw windows update takes a "little" more than an hour to catch up after a clean install,in some cases more than a day in your own admission at least three hours.

To each his own... doesn't matter to me. Don't like my method, you don't have to use it.

Also, Windows Update has never taken "more than a day" to update and that's including the time it takes to download the files - maybe it would take that long on a dial-up connection because of the painfully slow download speed. You must have misunderstood something, takes me about 3 hours to install windows, update drivers and get all my software/files copied back over.

Next you're gonna say there's no need to have a backup copy of your files...