Re-installing OS Question

[EqualMight]

Hi. I ran TDSSKiller and found out I have a rootkit infection win32.rootkit.pmax-gen, I removed it but I'm going to reinstall windows just in case. I have a question, is it ok if I can put files i want to keep (music, movies, games, word documents) on another hard drive and put them back on the newly installed windows?

Thanks.

[David H. Lipman]

Yes. And it is a good question.

You can copy DATA FILES (DOC, PPT, TXT, PDF, MP3, MP4, MOV, WMV, JPG, XLS, PUB, etc.) from what was an infected hard disk to another. However you want to do it with an anti virus product that is "on" and "enabled" and up-to-date such that as the files are read from the source disk and written to the destination disk each and every file is scanned. This is called "On Access" scanning.

Do NOT copy EXE, DLL or other executables. Only data.

Once you have wiped the hard disk of the infected PC and re-installed the OS of choice, make sure you have installed your choice of anti virus application such that it is "on" and "enabled" and up-to-date when you copy/move the data files from the temporary storage drive into your profile "Documents" folder.

[AdvancedSetup]

Also remember to delete the old drive partitions (not an OEM support one though) and create a new one for the install.

Many rootkits infect the MBR and/or create their own partition to run from so just formatting/wiping would not prevent the infection from coming right back.