Installing Antivirus on infected system
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
$200 is bloody cheap
Why do you think so? Don't you think reinstalling the operating system is a good solution than paying 200 bucks.
Reinstalling the operating system and preserving what you can of the user's files takes time and care. I personally don't like the idea of trying to 'clean' a heavily-infected system. You can never be sure you got rid of all of the crap.
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
Well, I got ambushed into a support issue for my cousin, don't you hate those? Apparently she has a virus on her PC and I was curious if there was a way to clean it before installing Symantec antivirus, which is what she is buying. I think Symantec recommends having a virus free system before installing, which seems like the only way that would ever happen is a clean install of the OS. I tried getting my cousin to run one of the online virus checkers, but apparently she is having tons of popups and slow inet when she tries to use the web. She tried to talk to the people at Geek Squad, but they want almost $200.00 to clean her system, which I think is a little steep, but I really don't want to deal with this issue over long distance. Any thoughts on a good bootable cd virus scanner that can be created from a clean pc and run on hers? Thanks, CT
I haven't used Symantec in a few years but I seem to recall the installation process included a scan that was launched from a bootable CD. Could be dreaming. It has been a long while.
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Well, I got ambushed into a support issue for my cousin, don't you hate those? Apparently she has a virus on her PC and I was curious if there was a way to clean it before installing Symantec antivirus, which is what she is buying. I think Symantec recommends having a virus free system before installing, which seems like the only way that would ever happen is a clean install of the OS. I tried getting my cousin to run one of the online virus checkers, but apparently she is having tons of popups and slow inet when she tries to use the web. She tried to talk to the people at Geek Squad, but they want almost $200.00 to clean her system, which I think is a little steep, but I really don't want to deal with this issue over long distance. Any thoughts on a good bootable cd virus scanner that can be created from a clean pc and run on hers? Thanks, CT
Not sure about what kind of virus your cousin has, but I've installed AVG Free on an infected machine in the past and it took care of it.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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Not sure about what kind of virus your cousin has, but I've installed AVG Free on an infected machine in the past and it took care of it.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
I have also AVG Free installed on my machine and never had problem with it and it also updated the virus definitions everyday. :-)
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I haven't used Symantec in a few years but I seem to recall the installation process included a scan that was launched from a bootable CD. Could be dreaming. It has been a long while.
Last time I had a cd it did that as well.
John
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Well, I got ambushed into a support issue for my cousin, don't you hate those? Apparently she has a virus on her PC and I was curious if there was a way to clean it before installing Symantec antivirus, which is what she is buying. I think Symantec recommends having a virus free system before installing, which seems like the only way that would ever happen is a clean install of the OS. I tried getting my cousin to run one of the online virus checkers, but apparently she is having tons of popups and slow inet when she tries to use the web. She tried to talk to the people at Geek Squad, but they want almost $200.00 to clean her system, which I think is a little steep, but I really don't want to deal with this issue over long distance. Any thoughts on a good bootable cd virus scanner that can be created from a clean pc and run on hers? Thanks, CT
I would install the antivirus and it should detect viruses while installing. Also as another user pointed out, its possible that the install cd is bootable and this will allow you to scan the machine without the os loaded.
John
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
$200 is bloody cheap
Why do you think so? Don't you think reinstalling the operating system is a good solution than paying 200 bucks.
crudeCodeYogi wrote:
Don't you think reinstalling the operating system is a good solution than paying 200 bucks.
If you have to recover user files while doing this it will take hours (although most of this time is hit a key and go away for 30 minutes...) When I do this I generally tell the user to drop off the machine. I hook it up on a KVM and do the work while I am doing other tasks. I usually spend 1 to 3 hours trying to rid the virus/ malware and if that does not work I make a clone using a linux utility and then I reinstall the operating system and put their data back to the best of my ability. I mean if they have data in their Program Files, I may not find it. But I do keep the backup for a few months so if they complain I can try to find the file.
John
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Well, I got ambushed into a support issue for my cousin, don't you hate those? Apparently she has a virus on her PC and I was curious if there was a way to clean it before installing Symantec antivirus, which is what she is buying. I think Symantec recommends having a virus free system before installing, which seems like the only way that would ever happen is a clean install of the OS. I tried getting my cousin to run one of the online virus checkers, but apparently she is having tons of popups and slow inet when she tries to use the web. She tried to talk to the people at Geek Squad, but they want almost $200.00 to clean her system, which I think is a little steep, but I really don't want to deal with this issue over long distance. Any thoughts on a good bootable cd virus scanner that can be created from a clean pc and run on hers? Thanks, CT
You can do it in the other way: You can get any bootable XP image for a pendrive, then you can install the antivirus in that same pendrive... once this has been done you can scan you hard disk without problems... Also (this is something I've never tried before) you could try using a VM in order to do that... you should only share the hard disk of the main computer and then scan it... In the other hand, in order to avoid the popups you can go into the task manager and try to close all the processes that should not be running... Hope this helps...
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Well, I got ambushed into a support issue for my cousin, don't you hate those? Apparently she has a virus on her PC and I was curious if there was a way to clean it before installing Symantec antivirus, which is what she is buying. I think Symantec recommends having a virus free system before installing, which seems like the only way that would ever happen is a clean install of the OS. I tried getting my cousin to run one of the online virus checkers, but apparently she is having tons of popups and slow inet when she tries to use the web. She tried to talk to the people at Geek Squad, but they want almost $200.00 to clean her system, which I think is a little steep, but I really don't want to deal with this issue over long distance. Any thoughts on a good bootable cd virus scanner that can be created from a clean pc and run on hers? Thanks, CT
Get BartPE and burn it to a CD. It has support for all kinds of virus scanners, adware scanners, etc. You can then boot to it and scan and clean the disk. I've done this before and it has worked well for me on some totally borked systems. David
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Well, I got ambushed into a support issue for my cousin, don't you hate those? Apparently she has a virus on her PC and I was curious if there was a way to clean it before installing Symantec antivirus, which is what she is buying. I think Symantec recommends having a virus free system before installing, which seems like the only way that would ever happen is a clean install of the OS. I tried getting my cousin to run one of the online virus checkers, but apparently she is having tons of popups and slow inet when she tries to use the web. She tried to talk to the people at Geek Squad, but they want almost $200.00 to clean her system, which I think is a little steep, but I really don't want to deal with this issue over long distance. Any thoughts on a good bootable cd virus scanner that can be created from a clean pc and run on hers? Thanks, CT
Hmmm. Run Spybot, Advanced SystemCare, CCLeaner and AVAST (or AVG) free. Then reboot into SAFE mode with Networking and do it all over again. There several online sites that can run AV against your machine so try this as well, while in SAFE mode. Not 100% guaranteed (what is???) but it works for me.