Curious: if malware is downloaded, installed, and executed, can it spread to other partitions on a given computer’s hard drive?
Yes but generally doesn’t.
Ok. Thanks.
You could set NTFS permissions to read only. That should stop access assuming you run as a limited user or an account that does not have write access by default…
Right.
In general I agree. But I did have an infection about 6 months ago that attached itself to every ■■■■■■ exec file it found on 3 drives and 8 partitions. God! What a battle. In the end, after trying every antivirus known to makindf I finally tried the Kasperky site on-line scan. It identified the virus, recommended I download their anti-virus and run it. I did (had to install it in safe mode, the virus was killing any installations), it ran for a day and a half, and finally annouced it had cleaned the whole lot. Like 1,000+ files! It seems the virus attached itself at the beginning of every exe file it found anywhere on any of my partitions or drives, so when they were launched it reinstalled itself. That is why none of the other anti-virus proggies worked.
Kaspersky just went through the whole system and chopped it off, putting the exe’s back to their original state. I know because ALL of my software installers were on the HDs with few (recent) backups, and they all work fine now.
I’m posting this I guess because I feel guilty that I can’t be a Kaspersky customer until I can afford to upgrade to a more recent system. And that maybe I never will since I discovered Comodo CPF BOclean etc. Nice, but not nice.
Kaspersky saved my ■■■, so thank you Kaspersky.
So the answer is YES definitely possible! Make sure everything is backed up clean before you hit the Internet. Then you have a few simple options:
1.Reformat, reinstall windows, reinstall all your software. Like 2 weeks work for me. or;
2.Launch Drive Image Pro or similar and put the partions back the way they used to be before the infection… if you made the backup images … I didn’t!
3. If all that fails or isn’t possible then try the K-site I mentioned a few times above. Maybe it’ll help you like it helped me.
Sorry, can’t remember the name of the virus, but the information about it on the 'net at the time was minimal.
I was grateful and tried to run Kaspersky as my standard anti-virus but unfortunately, as I have an old 1Ghz Celeron it was much to heavy a load for my machine.
Bilou
PS No affiliation to or with K… My gratitude is genuine. As it is to Comodo for the only firewall on the Internet that would run on Windows 2003. As a bonus I found out little by little, that even with it’s little problems here and there, Comodo CPF is the best there is out there bar NONE. Tried’em all!
I also posted on another thread recently that I ran the online Kasperksy test with no removal capabilities because it was free and it managed to catch one bad file. Luckily for me it wasn’t a harmful file since it was just sitting there as an .ini file.
What prompted me to post this question was because my bro had an HP pc with a secondary partition reserved for recovery and backup drivers. I knew he had lots of malware on his pc, so when I reformatted it, I wondered if it was a good idea or not to wipe out all partitions to be safe - wasn’t sure on the backup partition’s reliability. I ended up deleting all partitions.