Re-installed Windows, have questions

scolls

Member
On my netbook I had it for a month, and chose not to reformat it and deleted the bloatware. Well I was searching google for an automotive forum and clicked on a forum and somehow got infested with nasty trojans. The virus blocked my internet access, and every time I tried to run an virus scanner, it would say this program is a trojan. I kept getting pop ups from windows security saying I had 32 infections and had to register to remove them. I couldn't even open task manager to see what was running, it would say task manager is a trojan. I was able to do a system restore and that did no good. Eventually it told me I had no access to do anything on my computer. I decided now was as good of a time as any to reformat. Since it was a netbook, it only has USB so I had to use another computer with a disk drive and mount my Windows disk to a USB. I did that and reinstalled windows. Apparently, I also kept my old version of windows to. When I go into my C drive from my computer, I have a file for windows.old which I can access all my program files, pictures, documents etc. I ran a Malwarebytes scan on my computer and it found 7 trojans contained within the old windows. I recovered all my pictures and documents etc, so how do I just get rid of the old windows? It's taking up HDD space and likely has viruses. I'm not sure how I managed to get both of them installed.
 
Just delete the old windows directory. For future reference, the next time you get infected. come here and we'll help you clean it up instead of going through the hassle of reinstalling.

And most likely you had recovery partition that you could have booted to and reinstall windows that way.
 
On my netbook I had it for a month, and chose not to reformat it and deleted the bloatware. Well I was searching google for an automotive forum and clicked on a forum and somehow got infested with nasty trojans. The virus blocked my internet access, and every time I tried to run an virus scanner, it would say this program is a trojan. I kept getting pop ups from windows security saying I had 32 infections and had to register to remove them. I couldn't even open task manager to see what was running, it would say task manager is a trojan. I was able to do a system restore and that did no good. Eventually it told me I had no access to do anything on my computer. I decided now was as good of a time as any to reformat. Since it was a netbook, it only has USB so I had to use another computer with a disk drive and mount my Windows disk to a USB. I did that and reinstalled windows. Apparently, I also kept my old version of windows to. When I go into my C drive from my computer, I have a file for windows.old which I can access all my program files, pictures, documents etc. I ran a Malwarebytes scan on my computer and it found 7 trojans contained within the old windows. I recovered all my pictures and documents etc, so how do I just get rid of the old windows? It's taking up HDD space and likely has viruses. I'm not sure how I managed to get both of them installed.

Are you running XP or windows 7 starter. How many gigs of RAM do you have? If you can format the drive, try installing Microsoft Security Essentials as your first install after win.
 
Next time when you reinstall Windows be sure to delete the entire HDD before installing Windows again otherwise old Windows OS will stay there and viruses will NOT be removed...
 
I ended up just deleting the old directory. Ran a couple virus scans and found nothing so I'm assuming I'm in the clear. I have Avast and ZoneAlarm on my computer and still got infested pretty bad. I thought it was safe clicking on a forum. It was an actual thread since I was searching a specific problem. Is there anything else I should do to secure my computer? Avast warned me that there was a trojan but apparently it was too late. I never gotten a virus this bad before.
 
You should download and run malwarebytes on your system doing a full scan. And even though malwarebytes and Avast may say you are clean, don't mean nothing. There are mbr rootkit and bootkit infections that they can't catch, thats why other programs are required to run to make sure you are clean.
 
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