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What to do if my computer is infected by a virus or a malware?

I had a virus on my computer which would not allow windows to activate, giving the error "the device is not ready". It also changed the program data, and users folder location in the registry. I reinstalled windows figuring it was something that I got from possibly browsing on a malicious website, but I was wrong. After reinstalling my programs (which I keep in a seperate partition to prevent me from having to have to re-download everything" i got the same symptoms again. Is there any virus search engine where I can type in my symptoms to determine what this virus is, and how to get rid of it?

Community
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Sean
  • 496

2 Answers2

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If this behaviour is caused by a virus, then it is highly probable that your program files that were left on the partition are infected.

Your best option is to get a rescue disk you can boot from and run a complete scan of everything. If the virus can be removed it will, otherwise you'll get the option to delete infected files.

Paul
  • 61,193
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Since you are willing to do a reinstall and don't have any data to worry about at this point that is the best option. It is best to use the fdisk utility from command line before you actually start the reinstall. The fdisk utility will allow you to remove all partitions and format the hard drive before doing the install. I have seen viruses that are in the MBR and are still causing problems after reinstall.....most recently one that caused Windows Update not to work. I have even went as far as using a utility like Kill Disk to zero write the hard drive before reinstall to make sure that everything is blank.

Harold Larimer
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