question for comp. gurus......

[CAP1]

sorry for putting this here.....figured i'd get quicker response on weekend.

 got my old machine that had some sort of virus or something on it. finally got it to boot up, and im in the process of moving music from that machine to a portable hard drive. same with screenshots from ah, and pictures in general.

 is it safe to hook that hard drive to this machine to scan it? if there's anything in any of the files that i'm transfering, can it end up on this computer while i'm trying to scan?


 thanks!!

[Tupac]

What AV program are you using?

[CAP1]

What AV program are you using?

in that computer it had norton..which i know sucks...but it was on it

 i was gonna scan the portable with malewarebyte, superantispyware, and spybot search and destroy. i really just don't want to lose all of that music......

[Tigger29]

*most likely* you'll be ok.  What I would do is hook up the hard drive to the other computer and then boot the computer up in safe mode.  Hopefully you won't need any funny drivers to access it.

Once in safe mode do a virus scan on the portable drive and clean if necessary.

Then reboot into normal mode and scan it again.  If it comes clean this time then feel free to copy them onto the computer.

[gyrene81]

*most likely* you'll be ok.  What I would do is hook up the hard drive to the other computer and then boot the computer up in safe mode.  Hopefully you won't need any funny drivers to access it.

Once in safe mode do a virus scan on the portable drive and clean if necessary.

Then reboot into normal mode and scan it again.  If it comes clean this time then feel free to copy them onto the computer.

good advice...

generally speaking, unless you're actually accessing the files on that drive, you don't have to worry about activating a possible virus...booting into safe mode keeps that from happening accidentally...scan it with a good antivirus program first...those malware programs won't find actual virus that delivered the malware payload...especially if it's embedded in a file.

[TinmanX]

Would adjusting the jumper also be advisable here?

[Vulcan]

Norton is pretty good these days. Google malwarebytes and download their free scanner to give it the once over as well.

[TequilaChaser]

Would adjusting the jumper also be advisable here?

yes if it is an older IDE ribbon cable type drive.......adjust to SL ( for Slave ) .......make sure your other Drive if on the same cable is set to MA ( Master ) and not CS ( Cable Select ) to avoid any problems......

if it is SATA type, should have no worries, the PC will already acknowledge the existing SATA HD, and pick the 2nd SATA Drive as just another storage drive...etc... only thing that will change will be the associated drive letters for any card readers, DVDRW, CD Rom etc... they will all move one letter up at worst......

(edit: I am not a guru , though...needed to point that out  )

hope this helps

[CAP1]

i wasn't going to hook up the external hd by a ribbon though...i was going to plug it in through its usb cable.

 or would i be better off removing the infected hd from that computer, and then following the above advice?

[gyrene81]

use the usb option cap...if your usb subsystem loads under safe mode then you should be able to do a virus scan on the drive under safe mode...if not then you will have to do it with a normal boot...if you have windows search enabled (most do), go into the services menu and stop it, then disable it before you connect that drive to your system...that will prevent windows from indexing the contents for quick search and possibly activating whatever virus may be on the drive...it's rare that it ever happens but ya never know.

what did that system get infected with anyway?

[gpwurzel]

If its just the files you want, I'd buy an external drive caddy, sling it in there. Boot computer into safe mode, plug external caddy in, scan with av and malware bytes. Move your files over, then format that drive (low level format).

That way, you keep your files, have an external hd for backing them up once you've removed any virus/malware etc.

Then again, I'm like that.

Wurzel

[CAP1]

use the usb option cap...if your usb subsystem loads under safe mode then you should be able to do a virus scan on the drive under safe mode...if not then you will have to do it with a normal boot...if you have windows search enabled (most do), go into the services menu and stop it, then disable it before you connect that drive to your system...that will prevent windows from indexing the contents for quick search and possibly activating whatever virus may be on the drive...it's rare that it ever happens but ya never know.

what did that system get infected with anyway?

it had that "antivirus 2009" alert popup. i thought i got everything turned off and disconnected fast enough...i didn't. i had used another puter to dl malewarebytes,  superantispyware, and spybot onto a thumb drive, which seemed to get me back to nearly normal........but then little by little things started going silly again till the puter barely booted. that's when i gave up on that machine for a time.
 i was stupid, and had never backed anything up on that machine. i have over 5k songs on there, and even more aviation pictures.

[gyrene81]

it had that "antivirus 2009" alert popup. i thought i got everything turned off and disconnected fast enough...i didn't. i had used another puter to dl malewarebytes,  superantispyware, and spybot onto a thumb drive, which seemed to get me back to nearly normal........but then little by little things started going silly again till the puter barely booted. that's when i gave up on that machine for a time.
 i was stupid, and had never backed anything up on that machine. i have over 5k songs on there, and even more aviation pictures.

you have nothing to worry about with your files then...that nagware uses a trojan type autodropper to install itself into windows like an actual program...it embeds itself into the system32 directory and deep in the registry...it can be completely removed but you have to know what to look for and it can take hours to track everything down...

just hook that drive up to another system with the usb connection then run a few cursory scans...i doubt you're gonna find anything.

[MORAY37]

it had that "antivirus 2009" alert popup. i thought i got everything turned off and disconnected fast enough...i didn't. i had used another puter to dl malewarebytes,  superantispyware, and spybot onto a thumb drive, which seemed to get me back to nearly normal........but then little by little things started going silly again till the puter barely booted. that's when i gave up on that machine for a time.
 i was stupid, and had never backed anything up on that machine. i have over 5k songs on there, and even more aviation pictures.

I got hit with that too.  I used Combofix to kill it, like I told you then.

[CAP1]

I got hit with that too.  I used Combofix to kill it, like I told you then.

i think i did try that.........can't remember. i thought i had had it beaten though.........that puter's been sitting in the back room waiting for me to stop being a lazy bastage, and take my music off of it. i got most all of it onto the portable hd last night. even then, the computer was rebooting at random, and not letting me do certain things. unless i killed the teatimer, spybot was filling the screen with warnings too........