Be Excellent To Each Other

The wife's laptop has succumbed to a plethora of viruses, trojans and allsorts, which the anti-viral stuff cannot shift.

So, I have taken copies of everything she wanted saved (basically just photos) and want to now completely nuke the laptop and reinstall everything.

How does one go about doing this?

Take your Windows disk, put it in, wait for something to appear during loading saying "Press any key to boot from Disk", press a key, and follow the instructions. When you are choosing where to install Windows, make sure to format the drive.

It the "boot from disk" prompt doesn't appear, you need to go into your BIOS settings (usually by pressing delete over and over when you first turn the computer on) and customise your boot order, but hopefully you won't need to.

Cheers.

If I can't find my Windows disk, does anyone happen to have a spare lying around?

As its a fairly new laptop, odds are there is no boot disk and there is a recovery partition.

I do recall seeing one of those.

Coincidentally, I'm restoring my old laptop from the partition later and I've never done it before.

Laptops now generally don't have a windows disk, mind.

What brand & rough age of laptop is it?

Does it have a recovery disk? (This may be something that you had to create when first using the laptop)
Some brands have a recovery partiton which you can recover from (So long as you haven't picked up a sophisticated virus that has worked its way into that.)

Using the recovery disk/partition you want to go for the restore to factory settings option.

Will try this and then report back on how badly I failed.

And then, when you're done, install sandboxie for the browser.

</stuck record>

I have to confess that I wouldn't trust any part of the laptop any more.

You can get Windows 7 from the usual places, but it's a bit of a game finding one that hasn't been hacked that you can use you key with.

I've only ever done it from disc (or a bootable USB installer), but it has pretty much always been easy enough.

Give yourself plenty of time, and keep another computer/tablet/smartphone handy so you can look things up on the Internet if you are unsure, stuck or bored.

It's also worth having a copy of the most recent drivers to hand so you can quickly put them on, and also an antivirus installer.

And have a look at Ninite.

Plus, as you've got everything important off there it doesn't matter if it goes wrong first time and you have to do it again.

I've done Win 7 a couple of times and it has been smooth - it's so good at picking up drivers automatically that I'd say just install antivirus, plug it in to the router (it did, admittedly, not have a working wifi driver to start with) and let it update away.

Seemed to go pretty smoothly from what I can tell.

Thanks, folks!

And have you installed sandboxie so it doesn't happen again, hmm?

Do you remember to reverse the BIOS inputs? Reset the licensing? Unmount the PEBKAC?

*sucks air through teeth*

Gonna cost ya.

What are the restrictions on the free Sandboxie?

An annoying message once a day when you launch a sandboxed application.

Yes, but I have no idea how to use it. Just turning it on doesn't do anything, and I can't seem to launch IE out of it.

I am now reinstalling the OS on the new Beex server. Good job I hadn't moved much over.

When you installed it, it'll have created a shortcut called 'Sandboxed Browser'. Just rename it 'Internet Explorer' and remove the other IE shortcut.

I'm pretty sure you can simply right click on anything and select 'Run Sandboxed' if, like all sensible people, you don't want to use IE

Baby steps.

Having said that, IE within Sandboxie is as good as any browser out there.

CSS3 disagrees.

...for 99% of what you're going to use it for, and 100% of what Mrs Curio is going to use it for.

yeah, there's no way she plays Counter Strike.