I'd also second the backup & reinstall, nothing else is 100% in this day
& age of things that cloak themselves and not-as-yet detected
exploits/malware.
In addition I would suggest they rotate all passwords used anywhere and
consider monitoring their credit reports if they've done any online
transactions.
As to what to backup, everything. What to restore, non-programs (doc,
pdf, txt, etc...) & then carefully go through them with a up to date AV
(online) scanner(s). If they are with an ISP offering name brand AV for
free, install it if reputable otherwise buy one.
Christopher Fisk wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2006, Jerry Jones wrote:
I am looking for suggestions of what software tools I should bring
with me when I go look at the PC. I have a bootable Norton Anti-virus
disc and can let it scan the PC and try to clean it up. Is there
something better that I should use? If I do have to reformat and
re-install the OS, what is the best way to backup the data and not
re-infect the PC when the data is restored?
From a time/value perspective, if you can get them to agree to a reformat
that is generally what I prefer to do. Backup their data (Now they have
a known good backup) and reinstall windows. This gives you the
advantage of installing the latest bios/drivers/updates, etc while not
worrying about remnants of virus infections from installations past.
The amount of time you will spend cleaning the system, rebooting, etc
rarely justifies doing the cleaning on a system you can just format and
restore data to instead.
Just make sure you backup all the data they could need.
That said, if you really want to attempt to clean as opposed to
formatting, you can get yourself a Bart disk and boot from that and run
your antivirus, or take the drive out and put it into a USB2/Firewire
and scan it from a known good machine.
