Reformat disk drive -- is this the right solution?

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Guest

I've read through many of the previous posts regarding reformatting disk drives in XP and want to make sure that I am going to do the correct thing. So let me outline the situation

Several months ago my computer was being hacked into (my firewall had been breached) and it was completely messed up. A friend of a friend worked on it and for a short while things seemed better. He had installed other software such as Surf Secret and Spy Sweeper as added protection to my computer. Little did I know that problems were going to arise

I recently found out that my friend was the victim of identity theft by the person who worked on my computer. Now I am worried about what is on my computer (key logger program, etc.). I've recently had to reinstall my firewall three times because of corruption issues, I have terrible lag times, DSL is slow, instability issues, etc. I believe that he easily could have installed harmful programs on my computer and I would have no idea

I don't know anyone else to check my computer nor do I have the money to pay someone. I personally wouldn't have any idea what to look for. I was thinking that I could reformat my disk drive and then reinstall all my other software. Is this an acceptable solution

If so, do I just follow the advice given by Carey Frisch and then start installing my other software? I would greatly appreciate feedback on this. Thanks
 
Hi Shenan
I was curious as to how you 'burned' the patches onto a CD. When I get the
patches I never see an option to 'save' them and they just seem to install.
It would have been useful to have been able to save them as I recently had
to format my hard drive and now I have to download the patches again.
Lynn
 
Lynn said:
Hi Shenan
I was curious as to how you 'burned' the patches onto a CD. When I
get the patches I never see an option to 'save' them and they just
seem to install. It would have been useful to have been able to save
them as I recently had to format my hard drive and now I have to
download the patches again.
Lynn
Click to expand...

Nice question!

Download them individually.. Not through the Windows Update interface of
the web page, but the Windows Catalog. Microsoft has a decent article about
it here:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=323166

Also, they have a CD you can order that contains patches through October of
2003.
(FREE!)
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/cd/order.asp


My suggestion, however, is a little faster than collecting ALL the patches.
For most end-user/home-user types, this is just not worth the time.
Hopefully they won't be redoing their computers that much to need all of the
patches.

If you have a fast internet connection and/or you have a Windows XP CD that
includes SP1/SP1a already, here is what I think you should do. Grab the
following updates (don't get SP1a *if* your Windows XP CD already mentions
it being on there) and burn them to a CD:

Windows XP SP1a:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/servicepacks/sp1/sp1lang.asp

Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Windows XP:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...00-d7be-48e3-abcc-961602bd72c2&displaylang=en
or.. Short Link: http://tinyurl.com/r4lh

And the
Security Update for Microsoft Windows (835732):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...9E-DA3F-43B9-A4F1-AF243B6168F3&displaylang=en
or.. Short Link: http://tinyurl.com/2vj4h

With those and turning on your Firewall before you connect back to the
Internet, you should be able to go to:
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
and get any other critical updates you still need in a lot less time.
(And without much concern about all the trouble with BLASTER/SASSER.)
 
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