Fraudulent use of credit card

supersaver21

willyg78 wrote: »

Hi Supersaver21,

In my field, it's always good practice to wipe and rebuild a computer that's been infected with a virus, simply because sometimes when the virus has been removed, it will leave remnants in the system or backdoors that can be exploited by future viruses. Not always the case, but in some cases!!

The Tech Guys can sometimes be a bit overpriced compared to a friend or someone you know who can easily re-install Windows, Office, and your antivirus (AV) program.

Your documents stand a good chance of being completely free of viruses, but would need to be checked on a clean system with your new antivirus program just to be sure, most AV programs actively scan the files while they are being copied from your backups and will flag up if anything is infected.

The steps I would take if I was tackling this myself would be:-

1 Ensure all important data backed up to removable media (Pen Drive or Hard Disk).
2 Format the computer.
3 Install Windows from installation media
4 Install Office and other programs you had installed from media
5 Install your newly purchased antivirus program
6 Install any device drivers that came with the computer
7 Then connect your computer to the internet (It is important that a vanilla workstation is not connected to the internet without having AV installed)
8 Let your antivirus program update its definitions
9 Run Windows Update and install all Windows updates (This may require reboots, keep running until there are no more updates to install)
10 Copy your backed up files back to my documents, etc
11 Run a full scan from your antivirus program.

There you go.....that should be it!

You could also start from point 5 and install your antivirus program then skip to point 7 and go on from there, the most important thing is that the AV program and Windows are completely updated with their relevant patches. This ensures any exploits that Microsoft are patched properly on your computer.

The above may seem a bit overkill, and it's just my personal opinion! Only you can decide what precautions you wish to take!!

Whatever you decide to do...Good Luck!;)

Hi Willyg78,

Thanks very much for the extremely helpful advice. Its so nice to know that there are still people out there willing to help you, who don't even know you!!

Cheers

Supersaver21