Back up help

[Liquid_Scope_99]

Hello all, this isnt exzactly modding question so please forgive me .

One of my wifes friends is a photographer , and she has got a virus on her lappy.
She dosent back up often if ever lol just my luck anyway .I was wanting to help her out since she did or wedding pics for cost of supplies
.
She wants me to wipe the drive reinstall xp that i got coverde lol,
Needs me to back up her photos and programs and stuff like her photoshopped stuff and of course not bring said virus i mean basically how would i go about this .
I know how to burn and save stuff .if she took it to a shop to do a virus recovery what would they do .I think i know how but if i do this right i could possibly do this for a little extra cash some time for one of her coworkers . btw when i asked her if she had an anti virus she said where would that be and if windows was kept updated she said i suppose so . LoL this should be fun . on a side note , As with the stat of the building market and me being in the cabinet bussiness i may need a odd job or 10 for a while . thanks in advance any help appreciated

[SgtM]

The first thing I would do is attempt to clean the virus. Do know which one it is? Have you confirmed it's a virus? If you can clean it, do so and then backup her stuff, and wipe the drive. Otherwise, backup her stuff and wipe it like she wants you to. Advise her that there is no guarantee the virus won't be resident in one of the files you backup.

[Liquid_Scope_99]

Thanks ,SgtM i havent had a chance too look at it yet . Sorry i guess that was pretty broad term just saying a virus. I will pass along info that was pretty much what, i was thinking too thanks a lot SgtM +rep to you thanks again hopefully i can clean it . btw sorry for putting it in the wrong place my bad . thanks for moving

[doug91]

First you gotta find out what you're dealing with. Ask the owner when they started noticing the virus' negative affects. Ask them what web sites they usually browse to. If they use firefox, then anything downloaded should be on the desktop. Don't run a Windows Defender scan, its as blind as a bat. Try downloading Spybot Search + Destroy, this will look for and get rid of spyware and such. Next download some sort of virus scanner like clamwin, its free.

When you begin to backup some simple rules to follow. DO NOT back up the registry to a disk. DO NOT back up any files ending in .exe or that are applications. DO NOT back up anything downloaded from the web recently. If you're just backing up picture files and such then you shouldn't copy the viurs.

[Luke122]

Not entirely true, there are viruses which can infect image files.

My suggestion:

If you have a good antivirus (current too) on your PC, network them, and back up her files to your machine. Your AV will block the virus during the copy if it detects it. If not, you will be running a complete scan after the backup is complete anyways. (This is why I keep a computer strictly as a workhorse... I dont like to do this on my main PC)

Once you complete the backup, do a complete scan on your computer to make sure. Next, verify that you have backed up everything she wants you to save.

Once that's complete, start her computer in safe mode, and disable EVERYTHING on the startup tab in MSCONFIG, and turn off system restore. Reboot into normal mode, and run an online scan, such as Housecall by Trendmicro, or something. You could even download/install FreeAVG for her and get it updated, and scan her computer.

Once it's clean, make sure all the updates are in, go to www.grc.com and run the "Unplug'n'pray" and "Dcombobulator" applications, and then get something like "spybot" and make sure it's updated, then immunize and scan the machine.

Once you are sure it's clean and working fine, turn system restore back on, and set a restore point.

Scan the backup on your computer one more time, and then copy back to the laptop, and scan again on there.

:D

[doug91]

Well fine you can have a virus there, but then the backup is basically shot since almost everything is pictures. That is a very thorough suggestion, but kind of tedious if you ask me. Why not just find the virus before you back up? Hell, you might not even have to reformat the drive.

[Liquid_Scope_99]

Thanks guys a lot of good information that really helps hopefully i will be getting it soon and can go from there and the info you guys gave helps give me a direction to go in .
+ rep to all