I recently got a new PC with Windows XP. In the process, I migrated all my files from 2 older PCs running Windows 95 (b).
I put the files in a separate directory on the new hard drive.
I ran avast! Home edition and got some weird results. None said any virus was found but it stated that it found certain files archived so it couldn’t check them out. I didn’t have any files archived. It also said it found fies password protected but I didn’t password protect any files.
I’m not sure if my new hard drive is safe now. I ran a scan check before I migrated the old hard drives and everything seemed to check out OK.
But, I’m concerned re: these weird messages regarding my migrated files.
Many programs (usually security based ones) password protect their files for legitimate reasons such as AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy, there are others (and avast doesn’t know the password or have any way of using it even if it did know it). Do you use any other security based programs ?
When you run scans with the above programs and you delete harmful entries that they detect, a copy is kept (in quarantine/restore/backup) in case you need to reverse what you did. These are usually password protected, you should do some housekeeping and delete old backup/recovery/quarantine entries (older than two weeks or so), this will reduce the numbers of files that can’t be scanned.
I wasn’t using any anti virus or firewall or anti-spyware because I was running Windows 95 and dint think any one was writing viruses for Windows 95 computers.
I was just concerned because I migrated everything form my old hard drives to this new PC and didn’t want to migrate a virus over as well.
Avast didn’t seem to find any virus as it scanned the whole hard drive.
Most probably.
You can test your new system with AVG Antispyware; SUPERantispyware and/or Spyware Terminator to scan for spywares and trojans. If any infection is detected, better and safer is send the file to Quarantine than to simple delete than.