Destructive Virus: reformat options

[Arthur Rosch]

I use Win 7 Home Pro 64 (with SP1 dld later), Gigabyte Mobo, 8gigs RAM etc

Much of the past week has been full of virus trouble. I have Zonealarm and it's done well for me, but not this time. Yesterday something sneaked in through Chrome and really shut me down. I couldn't boot, I was stuck in an endless circle of "repair your computer", restart, and again. So I thought to reformat. But I know that I must uninstall the SP1 before I could do that. Impossible. I tried anyway. After a couple of attempts I got a reformat. I was upset, not making smart decisions, but I got my machine running, fast and sweet.

Here's the odd stuff. It looks like my OS is spread into two drives, with most of it on D drive. I have two internal drives, C and D.
In my C disk I got much of the old desktop folders. I had 500 gb of data. Still there, photos, everything. The drive wasn't wiped clean. It looks like the OS is on D. I'll upload files of both drives. Right now I'm doing 159 Windows Updates. Should I leave it be? It runs. A couple of times when I restarted I got a "Chose OS" sowing two Win 7 options. Hmmm.

If I must I can now uninstall SP! and start from scratch. but i was up all night installing my apps, etc.

Thanks

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, you should consider obtaining an ISO of the Windows 7 edition that your key is for, with SP1 integrated. It makes life SO much easier. At one point, they were available to download from DigitalRiver.

If it's a retail edition, Microsoft will let you download an ISO from their site. If it's OEM, then no such luck.

Anyways, you should really consider backing up all important data files / documents / pictures, onto maybe a USB stick or external HDD if you have a whole lot of files, and then boot using the Win7 DVD, and delete all of the partitions on the drive, and do a fresh install.

What it sounds like you did, somehow, is install a second copy alongside the first, to the D drive. Which, is probably workable, but there might still be lingering malware on the C drive, that could activate if you run programs off of it.

One other alternative, if you have your Windows 7 key, is to go to Microsoft's Windows10 Download site, and get the Media Creation Tool, and consider upgrading that install of Win7 to Win10, in-place. Once activated, then you can create a bootable USB or DVD with Windows 10 on it, and do a fresh clean install from that installation media, and then it should auto-activate on the same hardware, and you'll get a fresh clean install that way. Plus, you'll be upgraded to Windows 10. Which is arguably a better OS from a security perspective, although there is the "telemetry" issue too. Which can largely be mitigated by O&O Shutup10.

 

[Billb2]

Yes, you installed a new copy of Windows and left the old install there.

BACKUP!

You can use BCDEdit or better, EasyBCD make the old install unbootable and then just delete it and boot just the new install. You'll need to do some reading though.

And again, BACKUP first!

 

[Arthur Rosch]

I reformatted again, disconnecting the D drive. Now C is where it's supposed to be. There are, however, still some system folders in the D (which is now called L, as I re-connected it after I had plugged in all my USB drives.) Can I backup the stuff I need on the L drive, then format it from Disc Management?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I reformatted again, disconnecting the D drive. Now C is where it's supposed to be. There are, however, still some system folders in the D (which is now called L, as I re-connected it after I had plugged in all my USB drives.) Can I backup the stuff I need on the L drive, then format it from Disc Management?

Sure. Run malwarebytes, adwcleaner, and your favorite antivirus on the drive. Then grab the data and reformat it.

 

[RLGL]

Write zeros to the drive and start over. Next option is replace the drive

 

[John Connor]

You shouldn't have to uninstall SP1 to reformat.

And Zonealarm sucks as evident here. Install Sandboxie and Bitdefender Free.

 

[sm625]

This is why you only have one drive plugged in when installing windows. Windows does really stupid things with multiple drives during installation.

 

[Billb2]

No, people do really stupid things when trying to install dual booting. Windows does it perfectly.

 

[sm625]

No, people do really stupid things when trying to install dual booting. Windows does it perfectly.

It's got nothing to do with dual booting. I installed windows onto a system with two drives, and it actually put the 100MB partition onto the other drive! It never gave me the option on where to put it. It just puts stuff where it wants. So the computer wont boot unless both drives are there. Another time, I actually ended up with my OS installed onto the E: drive. Seriously. Again, no choice in the matter, it just does it.

 

[PliotronX]

This is why you only have one drive plugged in when installing windows. Windows does really stupid things with multiple drives during installation.

I learned this the hard way