I decide to reformat the PC to remove all malware.
Some questions
Does reformating the C drive (windows) kill all virus/trojans/rootkits?
My PC has 3 hard disks, Hard disk 1 is formatted into 3 partitions, 1st partition is C: is where windows is installed, the 2nd and 3rd partition contains data files (pdf, doc, excel, music…). The 2nd and 3rd hard disk contain data files.
I will format the C: and reinstall windows only, is it enough to kill all viruses/trojans?
Will trojans hide inside data partitions or somewhere else besides the C:?
Does anyone know what other data might be stolen?
Can the trojan steal passwords that I have typed into the browser before my PC is infected? Or the trojan can only steal the passwords that I have typed after my PC is infected?
When I am offline (modem is off), does the rootkit/virus still works, capturing passwords and keystrokes. After that when I am online, it will start to send data (captured during offline) to the hacker?
I appreciate all help and suggestions. Thanks in advance.
I did search for siszyd32 and read through all related threads before creating this thread. Those threads are talking about scanning the malware with softwares. They did not mention about reformatting PC to cure the virus.
My questions are related to reformatting the PC to cure the malware and how the malware works.
If the malware is only on C drive, reformating C drive would help. But, how do you know if the malware is only on C drive? If the malware has spread to the other 2 drives, reformating C drive only will not help.
Make sure to have run Boot scan on all drives. This will ensure bios is clear. Actually if you have the time, you would do better to try to kill off the trojans first and possibly malware then reformat c:
At least the easy to kill ones. Less chance of spread if there are less contaminated files.
What kind of boot scan do you mean? How do you do it?
I scanned all drives with the programs as as stated in the first post and deleted all the virus found. Currently doing avast scan and this should be my last scan before I format my PC. I have been doing scans for 3 days and I wonder if I am wasting my time because all malware should be removed if I do a reinstall of C drive.
I intend to scan all drives another time after I have reinstalled C drive. I wonder if I should have straight away do a reinstall of C drive and then do a scan of all drives to detect malware so I can save some time.
Does anyone know how to do a boot sector scan? From my understanding, a boot time scan is similar to the normal avast scan inside windows, except that a boot time scan is done before windows is loaded.
Malware may hide in boot sector / CMOS / BIOS, so I would like to know how to scan boot sector.
You’ll probably find that most malware does not install itself in the boot-sector, or BIOS or CMOS any more. The virus/malware writers have moved on from that.
Malwarebytes’ Antimalware should clear it up, as long as you have the latest definitions. Avasts’ boot-time scan scans the disks before windows starts as the malware stores info about itself in the registry, and therefore initialises as windows runs. The boot scan stops this, but will only currently work on 32-bit windows installs.
Formatting drive C: will get rid of any entries in the registry so your machine will not be infected, but it will not clear any files that are resident on your other drives. If you choose to re-install windows, then you will still need to do a scan to get rid of these malware files off of your disks.
Unfortunately, it can be a long process, and as long as you have all your data backed up, it may be quicker and easier in the long run to format C: and re-install windows.