Clean or reinstall? How long is it taking you to clean and R U successful?

[babaganoosh]

I used to be able to clean up malware from people's machines. But more recently, I'll spend loads of time on it getting rid of the bad stuff, but it seems that they are so ingrained in the OS, that Windows just doesn't run right or doesn't even boot up at all once the crap is removed.

I'm wondering how long it takes people to clean their machines typicall or ow much time do you spend before giving up / reinstalling windows and all the apps?

Most recently, I was cleaning a person's 6 year old celeron that had the UAC rootkit. I think I got rid of all the bad stuff but now as soon as you log in in normal mode, it reboots. Safe mode works OK. Sure I could work on this some more, but wonder how much time it'll take and if it gets going now, will it run OK (it seems that after malware removal, the OS just isn't the same as it was before, even if the malware is completely gone).

microsoft should hire these guys to write windows. You can't kill these malware, but windows crashes real easy : )

thanks!

[yardbird]

I used to be able to clean up malware from people's machines. But more recently, I'll spend loads of time on it getting rid of the bad stuff, but it seems that they are so ingrained in the OS, that Windows just doesn't run right or doesn't even boot up at all once the crap is removed.

Well when you used to clean up machines, maybe there was less bad stuff out there, today, theres alot more bad stuff to clean

I'm wondering how long it takes people to clean their machines typicall or ow much time do you spend before giving up / reinstalling windows and all the apps?

from 1 hour, to 20 hrs. it depends on how bad you want to clean it up.

(it seems that after malware removal, the OS just isn't the same as it was before, even if the malware is completely gone).

No it will never be the same as before. With all the countries that hate us, (N. Korea) ect.. it just gets worse, the AV/Firewall companies & malware compaines just have to make there products better. and the tools we use just have to be better & work to clean up a pc.

Did you think infections were going to get better? I don't think so. just my 2 cents cya later

As for MS, no comment

[babaganoosh]

thanks for the comments. I totally agree - the junk out there now is much tougher than it used to be.

And I guess that's my point. You would work on a machine for 20 hours rather than reinstall? sure, you don't know how long it'll take going in. and as you agree, it won't be the same as before.

As good as malwarebytes is, these newer malware seems to me to make the argument to reinstall sooner than later. sure, give it a try to clean, but my success battting average and the time spent (wasted) trying to clean a machine hasn't been good recently. Just wondering if others are coming to the same conclusion.

and sure, reinstall OS, patches, apps, data and configure everything can take hours too! : (

[Spud]

I work on the principle of, how secure will I be after I have removed the infections as often paranoia can set in especially when things just dont feel right afterwards. A computer is like a car engine and you get to know the tune, when this misses a beat, you soon notice very quickly. If its a minor infecrtion that is quickly removed I proceed as normal but when we are dealing with Rootkits and other major nasties, I prefer to simply remove them then totally reinstall my pc to square one. It may take about 10 hours but it helps to clean out all the junk and keeps my PC running at top performance. One reason I often backup my data as I dont suffer any inconvenience other than a few extra hours but have peace of mind afterwards.