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Trojan mary

19:21 / 03.05.05

i am replacing my PC tomorrow, ancient and virus riddled piece of shit that it is.
i have files on there i would love to keep, a few i would like to keep, and some that i dont really care about at all.
i am going to give my brother the old one to have in his room for doing uni work when he cant get on the main PC in the house and i was thinking a total wipe of the memory and boot record would probably cure it.
i still have the w98 discs to reinstall and he wont be online with it, so i figured it would do for his needs.

what i need help with is the logistics of taking files off a virus riddled machine onto a healthy one safely, and the wiping itself.

is there anything stupid i am likely to do?
is there anything clever i am unlikely to do?
have any of you done this and wished someone had mentioned something?
is there anyone online who would know more?

thanks for reading, any help would be appreciated.

19:41 / 03.05.05

There are a few ways to back files up depending on what you've got available with burning CD's being probably the best bet. If you don't have a CD writer than it's either floppies, a flash drive or simply emailing stuff to yourself to be downloaded later into the new machine. As for purging the old machine, just reformat and reinstall Windows and that'll get rid of any dodgy shit that's been lying around, not much to it really.

21:05 / 03.05.05

If you don't get rid of your viruses first you stand the chance of transferring them over with your files. Get yourself some computer disinfectant, disconnect from the 'net, scrub the hell out of your harddrive, then transfer your files to your new computer.

00:43 / 04.05.05

what's a good disinfectant?
any that are free?

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:46 / 04.05.05

If you mean you haven't been using an antivirus program, then I think you have to die.

AVG antivirus, available from Grisoft, is free for personal use and pretty good. Also download Spybot S&D and Lavasoft Ad-aware, get the latest updates and run them (links later, but they can be googled pretty easily). If you're just transferring files, you can drag and drop them - the easiest thing to do if you don't have a network might be to get a USB data transfer cable (obsolete tech, so about £10-15) and just port from one to t'other, as external hard drives under Win98 can be a pain in the breasticles.

Reinstalling Windows 98 will clean the system up enough to pass it on. However, it's good practice to clean disks as much as you can, since you don't know what your brother will do with the PC when he's stopped using it. Download Boot and Nuke, make a nuke disk and boot from it.

To be honest, why inflict Windows 98 on little brother, and the inevitable viral communications vector on us? There are more modern and better operating systems out there that take up as much space or less.

10:02 / 04.05.05

If you mean you haven't been using an antivirus program, then I think you have to die.

I think I'll be joining Haus in the beating you with some kind of blunt instrument (quite possibly a blunt instrument) if you haven't been using an antivirus. Both an antivirus and firewall are pretty much essential now, and whilst Haus has pointed you in the direction of a decent free virus killer, I'd take this opportunity to mention that amongst the best free firewall I've seen is ZoneLabs' Zone Alarm.

I'd also expand upon the above slightly and suggest that, in addition to Spybot and AdAware, you might like to consider a couple of other programs to keep your PC clean and shiny. I personally run both AVG, ZoneAlarm, CookieWall, Spyware Blaster, and EMS Freesurfer, as resident programs. I then use Spybot, AdAware, and Hijack This everyso often to clean out the system.
Most of these programs are personal choice, but, at the very least, you should be running a viruskiller and a firewall.
If you ever need any help with regards to spyware, malware, virus, etc., then I suggest a quick visit to the Spywareinfo Forums. That site contains pretty much everything you'll ever need to know about PC protection, including a batch of highly recommended software links.

To be honest, why inflict Windows 98 on little brother, and the inevitable viral communications vector on us? There are more modern and better operating systems out there that take up as much space or less.

Again, Haus is pretty much spot on here. Neither 98 nor 98SE are supported any more, and, in security terms, they have more holes than Swiss cheese.
You could 'upgrade' to XP, but I personally dislike it greatly, so I'd advise installing Windows 2000 Professional instead. If you don't have access to a copy, send me a PM and I'll arrange for one to get to you by carrier pigeon.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:10 / 04.05.05

You're like the good fairy of computing, Tez.

Win2000 is more stable than 98, and cheaper than XP... I was thinking of Linux, also.

11:56 / 04.05.05

You're like the good fairy of computing, Tez.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:08 / 04.05.05

In fact, toksik, if you've got broadband, a CD-burner and the Win98 install discs handy anyway, download the install boot disc from www.ubuntu.com and install it over your current setup. See how you and your brother like it. If you don't, just reinstall Win98 over the top. No worries.

20:41 / 04.05.05

Y'know, I keep seeing people list all these shitloads of anti-spyware apps that they run all the time and keep resident and think "What the hell for?" Since switching away from IE (which is another tip here: get the fuck rid of that thing for future surfing) I haven't bothered with any of that stuff and have been fine. It's not like I don't sometimes descend into the depths of the net either so I'm hardly in a position to be immune simply because of my surfing habits. The other day, after telling some hapless IE user about Microsoft's new spyware scanner, I decided to give it a shot just to see and came out completely clean so it's also not as if I'm infested and haven't noticed. I dunno, I just wonder sometimes what in the hell people are doing with their machines to actually need all this stuff installed, it all seems to be getting a bit out of control in the paranoia stakes. Or have I just been insanely lucky and other Firefox users out there still getting infected? I'm saying all this assuming people aren't installing dodgy apps with bundled spyware obviously, with that being the other non-browser related infection vector.

20:43 / 04.05.05

Oh, and the only other thing to consider if installing XP or 2000 on a currently Win98 machine is driver support given that the 98 drivers won't be any use with the new OS. Granted, I suspect that was more of a problem when XP first came out than it is now but perhaps still something to consider. Though, if anything didn't work and you couldn't get your hands on updated 2000/XP drivers, you could always simply reinstall 98 again fresh without having wasted anything but a bit of time.

18:15 / 05.05.05

not use antivirus?
do you think i'm totally stupid?
actually, don't answer that...

i had avg6 and i went for avg 7 when recommended to.
the PC died shortly after avg7 was installed and, while i'm not convinced it was related, a friend has since told me paranoid tales of companies advertising their AVsoftware by making a free one with holes in it...
i also had adaware, and some other spyware programs.

i think the problem may have been trusting shitty files from shitheads over P2P; possibly some of the more inadvised of my 'erotic research'.

my main concerns here are that my brother will be able to use the PC for word processing(and his text files will be easily read on uni machines) and that i wont cause my new machine to die.
i'll away and research linux a bit, and i think i'll prolly buy norton internet security so i can feel safe.
i'm almost certainly going to get a new browser for my own machine but, as my brother's wont be online, i reckon he can not use IE just as well as he can not use anything else.

thank you to all for your help.

19:35 / 05.05.05

and i think i'll prolly buy norton internet security so i can feel safe.

Seriously, I wouldn't advise that. Both Norton and MacAfee have become hideously bloated in recent years and install all sorts of pish on your machine, perhaps in an attempt to convince people that they're somehow getting value for money now that the free products are so good. I've also heard of many peoples machine slowing to a crawl simply because these things are so bloated. Install the free version of Avast anti-virus and the free version of ZoneAlarm firewall, switch to Firefox instead of IE and use a decent file-sharing network like BitTorrent instead of Kazaa and you'll be fine.

08:11 / 06.05.05

the PC died shortly after avg7 was installed and, while i'm not convinced it was related, a friend has since told me paranoid tales of companies advertising their AVsoftware by making a free one with holes in it...

Whilst that is true in some cases (SpywareHunter was infamous for giving false positives to justify the purchase of the complete product), AVG was not responsible for your PC death.
The free edition of AVG uses the exact same coding as the licensed version, the only difference being that in the latter you are paying for more options, rather than just bog-standard virus protection.

i think the problem may have been trusting shitty files from shitheads over P2P; possibly some of the more inadvised of my 'erotic research'.

I think that's definitely your problem. If you must use P2P, I suggest you run BitTorrent and/or eMule. I use both, since not everything I want is available on one, and have yet to encounter a problem with either.

Seriously, I wouldn't advise that. Both Norton and MacAfee have become hideously bloated in recent years and install all sorts of pish on your machine

I have to agree. Norton and/or MacAfree = evil, evil, evil. IIRC the MacAfree package alone runs something ludicrous like eight processes simultaneously, and both can and will slow your PC down. ZoneAlarm as your firewall and ACG as your virus killer are more than sufficient for the job.

On the browser subject, I run both IE and Firefox. The whole Spyware/Malware industry is an area of interest to me, and there are certain situations in which I require IE to examine various threats by allowing controlled infection. If you're just surfing however, Firefox or Opera are the way to go, especially the former.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:40 / 06.05.05

Linux! Linux! Linux! Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice, an open-source office suite that saves to all standard formats, including Microsoft Office and Rich Text Format. Why not download the "live" CD and have a fiddle with it?

15:32 / 07.05.05

haus, bro, i'm sold on the ubuntu geezers.
i love the zulu etymology of the name and i like the ideas on that site you gave me.

i worry that my wee bro may be a bit baffled by it and feel more comfy with what he knows, but i'm certainly going to give it a whirl on my own machine.

zulumachinego?

15:41 / 07.05.05

I've been impressed by Ubuntu running on my "experiment machine" iBook (pics here, long boring blog post here). It's all very professional and easy. I say this knowing that I'm a bit of a geek, of course, but I'm not a huge Linux geek, I don't even know what termcap means.

15:49 / 07.05.05

termcap?
you made that up.

do you reckon, then, that an ubuntu machine would suit a computer using (but not massively computer literate) student? is it really easy to make a disc of an essay on an MS machine and load it into the ubuntu one? and vise versa?

16:12 / 07.05.05

Oh, you needn't worry about document compatibility. OpenOffice is better at opening Word docs than Word is.