Can I do a clean install and still keep some files?

I believe I have a virus or trojan on my laptop - and its taking up resources. I ran an anti-virus, AVG, and it found a trojan spreading to many executable files on my laptop.

I have over 100gigs of material I want to save on my laptop, none of it executable files.

My question is, can I save my media and do a fresh install of windows - cleaning out everything else?

I dont want to partition my hard drive either

 

What is the name of the trojan?

 

Probably compress that 100gig of data, scan it to rule out any viruses being compressed too, and move it to an external drive (which is at risk of getting infected as well).
Best is to clean up your OS with a proper antivirus.

 

I tried using AVG - it didnt help. It found the trojan, and "healed" over 30 infected files - but theres still like 80 processes running at startup (Yes, I went to registry and deleted all startup associations)


I am buying a 1TB External HD in the next few days, but I really didnt want to wait

 

Checkout Kaspersky (activate with a trial key), and see if it flushes out the virus/trojan. (or any other antivirus software)
You could also make a UDF image of the data (if not compressing), but I guess a trojan will easily sneak into an image file as well.

 

So you guys didn't answer my question. All I want to know is, Can I re-install windows and delete everything off my hard drive, start completely fresh - but have a SAVE folder with about 100gig of media in it that doesnt get touched?

 

If you delete everything on a partition (during/before the install), so where will the SAVE folder be SAVED ?!

 

I don't want to delete everything on the partition - I want to delete everything BESIDES a save folder.

On windows install - there is an option to install windows WITHOUT formatting your hard drive. It basically installs windows OVER a copy of windows, replacing the former without changing anything else.

What I'm specifically asking, is if I do that - Will the registry be clean, and if I manually delete everything else BEFOERHAND, except for my save folder - and windows folder of course - well - will that work?

lol

 

The registry will be removed/deleted during the install, and the previous install will be stored in a folder ('windows.old' something like that), but the infected files will still be in it. (And whatever you can read/write on that HDD, so can the virus)

And how can you manually delete the windows folder ?? (Let me guess, probably by booting into linux)

 

Well, one thing you can do is split your HD into two partitions; one for your OS, and another for your data. Then, you can copy all of your data to the newly created partition and install Windows. When you install Vista/XP, you can choose to simply format only the first partition. The installer will leave your data untouched. Of course, the problem is whether you have a hard disk big enough to handle 100GB+ on partition 1 and the making of a second 100+GB partition.

 

He said he didn't want to partition it.

Supermarket, unless you want to risk reinfection, your only option is to copy your media files to another drive then wipe the hard drive clean when you install. Have it do a full format of the drive to be safe. As an extra precaution, scan your removable drive once you copy your media files to it to make sure nothing is infected. Use multiple scanners if possible (avg, avast, etc just not simultaneously )

Once you do that, reinstall windows, reinstall drivers, reinstall all your most used programs, but don't re-add your media files. Make an image of the hard drive first using a program like DriveImage XML and keep that backup on your external drive. It will save you loads of time next time you have to reinstall windows. Once you do all that, then you add your media files.

 

I guess the OP will be better of running multiple scanners now, rather than re-installing windows....since he does not want to partition and also does not want to wait for the arrival/purchase of his external HDD

 

Why on earth not? If you separate your OS from your data reinstalling widows would be snap.

 

try scan and clean under safemode, away from the net. Perform a multiple pass, if you have to. Clean up registry (cCleaner comes to mind) in between passes.

After the scan/fix you can try the repair-installation.

Or as (rightly) suggested by many posters above,
. back up this data onto an external drive, and scan it again (and again ... total "clean" would still be a question mark)
. perform clean install
. copy the data back

cheers ...

 

Thanks everybody for your input.


I had a friend bring over an external hard drive - and I copied my media there, and did a completely clean install of windows.

I'm Glad I did, because my machine is running better than EVER

I also left a 10gig partition for the image file I'm going to make to backup my system - as everything is running perfect now, better than it ever has, literally!