- How many letters can a Senator write
Before he breaks down and cries ?
Yes, and how many hearings can a committee hold
Before it’s heard all the lies ?
Yes, and how many briefings can a Congressman hide
Before he’s complicit in the crimes ?
The answer my friend is more than you can imagine.
The answer is more than you can imagine.
Quoting myself, for posterity.
I saw that, it was pretty damn good.
OT – cleek, another computer question(s) for you (if you don’t mind). I reinstalled Windows, which I had assumed would wipe out all the files on my hard drive etc., but if I go to the start>run function, I can still access all the old files and presumably whatever bad thing caused the malfunction in the first place.
Is that normal? Do I need to worry about the virus or spy/malware that hit me last time? Anyway to overwrite/delete those old files (or access them so I don’t have to import everthing from the backup DVDs)? If I don’t delete them, will they eventually be overwritten as I put more data on the machine? I also noted that the Webroot Anti-Virus/Spyware software I installed reviews all those old files.
Thanks much.
it’s normal if you didn’t format the hard drive when you installed Windows. all the old files will still be there and, until you run a virus scanner, they could still be infected.
first thing i’d do is run a full anti-virus scan on all the connected drives (including any USB drives, even the keychain ones, i might have used). and then i’d run a malware scanner (Ad-Aware, SpyBot S&D, whatever) – and then i’d run a different malware scanner, because i like to have a second opinion. if those things find stuff, tell them to fix it (or delete the files if they can’t be fixed). if all that came back clean, i’d assume everything was good to go – even if it was stuff that had been around fro before the infection.
nothing is overwritten unless it’s been deleted (and dumped from the Recycle Bin!) if you can see it in Explorer or My Computer or the Recycle Bin, then it’s still there for real.
Thanks. I didn’t see an option to re-format the hard drive on re-install, is there a way to do that? I suppose I could get Webroot’s “Windows Washer” and have i go through and erase everything.
when I ran the Webroot anti-spyware/virus software the first time after reinstall, it found a couple of things, guess I’ll have to get another one to cross check.
thanks again for you advice
IIRC, there’s a chance to do a format somewhere very early in the Windows install process.
will try that, thanks.
Have a good weekend.
Any chance that the malware created its own partition and is still living on my computer?
i suppose it’s possible. i’ve never heard of one doing that, though.
do Start / Run and enter “compmgmt.msc”
that tool can show you all the partitions on all your drives.
@#$#@$#@$@#@!!!!
So I’ve reformatted and reinstalled, everthing looks clean, and then as XP gradually updates itself, it gets halfway through Service Pack 2 and puts up an “Access is Denied” warning and then uninstalls everything it updated/installed (whic of course takes forever). I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that I never get asked for the product key when reinstalling.
Now I’m going to go shoot myself.
And I don’t suppose running XP w/o SP2 is a good idea.
Google suggests that this is a common problem.
microsoft has an article on it.
computers can reallly suck, can’t they? i’ve been fighting a Linux installation for four days. joy.
Yeah, tried the MS workarounds already, didn’t work. It’s weird because doing the whole gradual update thing worked just fine (no problems with SP2).
Now, if someone could just have paid me my hourly rate for dealing with this, I could have gotten 4-5 new computers. I suppose wholly “new” SP2 equipped XP software is available for purchase.
Blyeah.
I suppose wholly “new” SP2 equipped XP software is available for purchase.
yup. shore is.
:)