Stop Trying to Clean Your Infected Computer! Just Nuke it and Reinstall Windows

Stop Trying to Clean Your Infected Computer! Just Nuke it and Reinstall Windows

Some people spend hours — maybe even days — trying to clean an infected Windows system and ensuring it’s actually clean and safe afterward. It’s usually not a good idea to do this — just reinstall Windows and start over.

This may seem like a daunting task, especially if you don’t have good backups of your important files. But it’s worth it to quickly obliterate an infection and ensure your system is safe.

If One Piece of Malware Slips By, Your Computer is Compromised

The key to securing your computer is ensuring it doesn’t get infected in the first place. That’s why people run antivirus applications that can check programs before they run, ideally preventing a piece of malware from running even once. If malicious software makes it through this protection, it has free rein over your system until it’s discovered and removed.

This is a problem for many different reasons. The malware can take this chance to burrow deeper into your system, hiding itself from being discovered by installing a rootkit that starts up during the boot process. It can infect various system files. It can use its access to transmit your personal data, credit card numbers, and passwords over the Internet.

Worse yet, malware can function as a Trojan horse, opening the floodgates to additional malware that it will download and install from the Internet. If you find your computer is actually infected by a piece of malware, you don’t know if that’s the only piece of malware that’s infected your computer.

GO HERE TO READ MORE
http://www.howtogeek.com/202590/sto...-computer-just-nuke-it-and-reinstall-windows/

 

i would much rather just use my second hdd to clone all my files and os to my infected drive,after formatting it.i am still of the opinion that a reinstall is not only a last resort but totally unnecessary if you have a proper backup. i can see how some malware is near impossible to remove but i havent had one of those yet.if we are talking about your average user here,i think that this suggestion is irresponsible at best.we should be,rather,talking about how to backup your info so a reinstall is not needed.

 

WHAT I USE
Acronis True Image 2015 for PC and Mac
Protect your entire system – email, music, photos, videos, documents, personal settings, bookmarks, and all your applications with award winning Image backup & recovery for 3 computers.

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/

 

THIS ONE IS FREE IF YOUR USING A WESTERN HARD DIVE
Acronis True Image WD Edition Software

Acronis True Image WD Edition Software helps you to completely clone your current system drive onto your new WD hard drive. Cloning makes an exact copy of your old system drive on your new WD hard drive, including the operating system, applications, data, preferences, and email settings. Everything will be present and operate exactly as it did on your old hard drive. Acronis True Image WD Edition now supports WD Advanced Format Drives and ensures that all partitions are optimally aligned.

ATIWD is based on the award winning Acronis True image Home 2013 backup, restore and disaster recovery program.

Key Features of Acronis True Image WD Edition Software:

• Drive Cloning - Copies the source drive to a new WD drive, leaving all data on the source drive.
  
  
• Drive Migration - Erase the source drive after the new WD drive has been imaged.
  
  
• Drive Deployment - Enables users to prepare a WD drive so that selected folders or partitions can be excluded from the destination image.
  
  
• Drive Image Backup - The long-term usage of the Drive Kit software will be to provide full drive image backups of a source drive at any time. Backup drive images will be stored as a file, which can be copied to any direct attached drive, network attached storage drive or optical media (CD/DVD).
  
  
• Drive Image Recovery - The Recovery Manager enables users to restore a drive image from a direct or network attached drive. The Recovery Manager can also either erase just a portion of the drive to be used for the restored drive image, or all of the previous OS.
  
  
• Create a Bootable Standalone Recovery Manager - With the Drive Kit software, users can create a bootable ISO image file, which contains the WD Drive Kit Standalone Recovery Manager software.
  
  
• Recover a Drive Image from the Bootable Recovery Manager Software - The bootable Standalone Recovery Manager enables users to recover a drive image from either a CD/DVD drive, a direct attached drive, or a network attached drive.
  
  
• Download the Data Lifeguard Tools software (Acronis True Image WD Edition and user manual and the WD diagnostic tool) and follow the instructions provided to complete the installation.
  
  

Acronis True Image WD Edition Software

• 
  File Size: 273 MB (approx.)
  Version: 16.0.0.5962
  Publish Date: 04/16/2014
  Supported Operating Systems
  
  • Windows XP
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows 7
  • Windows 8/8.1
  Supported Languages
  
  • Version 16.0.0.5962 supports Chinese simplified, Chinese Traditional, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish
  Instructions
  
  1. Click on the Download Now button in the upper right corner.
  2. On the Language page, choose the language version of software you want to download.
  3. Download the Acronis True Image WD Edition Software to your computer.
  4. Make sure you close all programs, and click on the EXE file. The install wizard will carry you through the installation process.
  5. You will need to reboot your computer once the installation is completed.

GET IT HERE
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en

• 
  

 

hey ireland,i used to use macrium reflect but have been using acronis for a couple of years now.if there is a downside to this method of backup i aint seen it yet.

 

Anyone who uses "plowing and paving" to fix their Boot drive must have "splinters in the windmills of their mind".

I have used Acronis TI Home for years, after giving up on Ghost, and have a scheduled backup each day. With it, I am able to completely restore my Boot Drive in 6 minutes or less and all of my apps, settings, tweaks, updates etc. are restored without spending hours or days putting it back like I had it..

Easeus Todo is Free and does a very good job of backing up, it just doesn't have all the extra functions as Acronis..

 

so eloquent you are 2old.LOL.just put acronis to the test the other day when a windows update shut my sound off.20 min later i was back.odd little problem when i clone from my backup drive to my main drive tho.i get a mbr error when the computer boots.doesnt seem to affect the boot but i still went to repair and recovery with my windows disk in and ran the Bootrec.exe/FixMbr and Bootrec.exe/FixBoot to get rid of the error message.TI rules.

 

You know that TI backs up the MBR and you can just install it. huh?

 

yep.this was an error seemingly caused by acronis.going the other way,cloning from my primary hdd is ok,no error.its just coming back from the secondary hdd?missing something im sure.

 

If you were running TI from Windows, then your windows may have had a glitch in it.. You can make a bootable disk with TI that runs from a M$ mini dos in case your drive gets screwed up badly and you can't run it from windows. I also have Acronis Disk Director and a boot disk for the pair..

 

thanks 2old.so far running the two commands in command prompt does the trick.like i say it only does it when i use the 2nd drive to clone to the primary drive.even with the error it boots fine tho.

 

I really don't know what you mean by: "when i use the 2nd drive to clone to the primary drive."

All of my backups are kept on a second drive........... hell, all my data and desktop are on the second drive also... That way, when I restore my boot drive I don't loose anything that was sitting on the desktop or data in a library that was saved after the image was made...

 

Just to clear that up.. I have all my libraries: my documents, my music, my pictures, my videos, my movies, downloads, desktop etc. etc. are re-directed to the second drive and the only thing on the boot disk is windows and the programs... Acronis has a non stop backup that backs all my data files to another partition and I keep about a months worth before I clean up anything older... if I ever loose a data file or program it can be restored in a couple of minutes..

 

my second drive is an exact copy of my primary drive.os,files,programs etc.i dont change a heck of a lot so i just do manual backups by cloning my 1st drive to my secondary drive.if were not on the same page here i think we may at least be looking at the same book.lol

 

You have to read the whole dam book! Not just look at the pictures....

 

no pictures in any of my books. couple of magazines maybe.lol

 

Just stay clear of electric fences...........

 

sage advice o great gazoo.

 

Using easeus todo back v5.5 would be best than versions after this, tho only if you create image files or file/partition images,this will allow below default compression level as in later versions this selection is removed unless using paid