Repairing an Infected System

What should you do if you suspect that your computer has been infiltrated by a virus? For starters, don't panic. If you indiscriminately begin deleting files or mucking with the registry, you could wind up making your ultimate cleanup job much more difficult. Follow the recovery instructions listed here to work your way through the cleanup process safely, without losing your sanity.

Should you start from scratch?

Clean up or reformat? That's the difficult choice you face when your computer has been attacked by a virus or other hostile code. Given the choice, most people would prefer a simple cleanup in preference to the hassle and downtime involved in reformatting, reinstalling the operating system, reinstalling all ...

Get Microsoft® Windows® XP Networking and Security Inside Out: Also Covers Windows 2000 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.