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And let this be a lesson to you, too, Ken :) .... Set her new AV program
to update and run on a daily scheduled basis. AVG and Avira allow for
this, as do the major for-pay players -- Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky,
Trend Micro, etc. My PCs update about 3 a.m. most days so it doesn't
interfere with regular PC usage.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Combs, Richard
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 3:24 PM
To: Ed; 'Ken Poshedly'; 'Techwr-l'
Subject: RE: anti-virus removal question
Ed wrote:
> Frankly, even if you tried all of those steps, you'd never know for
> sure if all traces of the virus or "antivirus" software are gone. I'd
> back up the data, format the drive, and start from scratch. Not a bad
> thing to do on a
> 2-3 year old machine, anyway. It'll probably take less time than the
> other options, too.
Agreed, starting from scratch is a pretty good idea. But I suspect
there's one big catch in this situation. If Ken's daughter hasn't kept
anti-virus protection active and up-to-date, I'm guessing there is no
recent data backup, either. And since Ken said the current state of the
PC is "can't do nuthin'," backing up the data _now_ isn't an option.
Besides, that would back up the malware as well.
Ken, if you're physically able to connect her laptop's HDD to your PC as
a second drive, that's probably the least effort. But _be careful_! You
don't want to infect your PC.
A safer option is to boot her laptop from a CD/DVD, floppy, or USB
stick. You don't need a Vista boot disk, specifically -- anything that
can run the app with which you plan to remove the infection. If you just
want to back up her data files to an external drive before formatting,
you just need something that can read an NTFS-formatted disk.
Now, practice saying "Let this be a lesson to you, young lady!" ;-)
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
------
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