Hi Charles,
On 13/01/12 19:04, Charles Blair wrote:
I have the lenny release of debian and windows XP as a dual-
boot using grub 0.97. The debian system (of course) seems to
be working fine, but I've gotten some malware (of course) on
the windows side.
Can somebody recommend software (preferably free) that
will deal with the bad windows stuff without trashing the
linux system? I'm concerned that running standard-issue
diagnostic and treatment stuff will tamper with the boot
sector, among other things.
In the past I have sometimes found it more effective and overall less
time-consuming to simply re-install the system on malware-infested
windows installations, than try to 'clean' them. I say this because
something like the Trinity live cd may take up to 1 day or even more to
scan with all the available antiviruses.
If you do decide to go this route the following cautions and drawbacks
come to mind:
- Be sure to back-up any valuable data both on the Windows and Debian
partitions (you never know when playing around with partitioning-enabled
software), this would typically include the Documents and Settings
directories for the various users on the windows side, /home
partition/directory on debian maybe something in /etc. - YMMV
- This can usually be done by running any Live CD and attaching the
machine to an external hard-disk but your mailage may vary depending on
the size of data you need to backup.
- Consider the fact that for the windows side any infected file you
back-up still remains so, although copying it off on an external hard
disk, even better if on a dedicated partition *should* reduce the risk
of reinfection if you take some sanitisation measures such as having an
updated, un-compromised antivirus, treating with suspicion .exe, .com,
.dll, office files etc.
- Reinstalling Windows XP *will* surely overwrite the MBR, thus if grub
starts from there it will be unusable. But, this can easily be
corrected, again through using more or less specific live CDs and
googling around will provide many links.
- IIRC Windows installer will offer to use whole disk thus potentially
deleting your debian partition(s) too! Check *very* carefully the
partitioning options of the windows installer.
- In windows you will have to re-install all software. This is the
biggest bummer, as it will be much more painful than e.g. re-installing
all packages in debian because each software will have to be reinstalled
manually. This especially applies to software with fussy authorisation
methods such as sending emails, hardware snapshoting etc. A naive yet
useful tip might be to print out the dir of the c:\Programs directory
(or similar). In some enterprises windows machines bootstrapping is
usually done to certain extent.
Good luck,
Lorenzo.
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