OT: Damned Viruses everywhere!

[Suicide Junkie]

I try to keep an image of my OS drive so I can format and restore without any hassle, without much time, and without losing my settings.
Very highly reccommended for next time.


What you should do, is back up anything you can't reinstall... all the stuff you made yourself and that isn't posted to the web somewhere. Burn it to nice physical CDs.

If you have trouble getting the virus out, make sure you have your stuff backed up as above.
Then "Format c:" to be sure.

Partition your drive into at least two pieces when you reinstall... one for windows and apps, and the other for your files that you don't want to lose when you need to nuke and rebuild windows the next time.

[Starhawk]

Well according to what I read I should not lose any of my data my booting from my disk and selecting "repair" instead of reinstall.

Is this accurate information?

I'll start backing up my stuff soon you can be sure of that especially if I have to wipe this dang comp.

[Suicide Junkie]

I would not trust any "repair" option with the only copy of my data.
Don't gamble; back it up. Or physically unplug the drive that holds your data while you try the restore operation.

Note:
Also, be sure to scan the stuff you backed up before you put it back on the restored PC!
You don't want to do the whole thing twice.

[Starhawk]

I ran yet another virus scan and it's still there after I "cleaned" it, I can't get rid of the virus so doing a restore might not do me any good.

Worst part is I don't know WHERE the virus is it's just called vxgamit and I can't even find any info on it beyond it's screwing up my computer

[Suicide Junkie]

Consider:
It will take you less than an hour and a half to format and reinstall windows. And you only have to be in front of your computer for about 10 minutes to click the initial "OKs"
The time spent installing your software again depends on what you have.

Is it worth continuing to spend hours trying to clean the virus, or would it be faster and easier to backup, nuke and rebuild now?

ALSO:
DO NOT ATTEMPT this while you are tired. Depending on your time zone, you should wait until morning before you start.

[EaX]

Also you might want to consider that some viruses record themselves on the MBR (Master boot record) i dont think this is the case, the only way i'm aware to remove them is doing a fdisk /mbr, however if you're using NTFS you dont have to worry about this.

editted: spelling