I have a malware/virus problem and the programs i use cannot detect it so im formating my hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. My question is what is the best way to format my hard drive because i know there are many ways of doing this, some are fast but wont delete everything, so id like to know what would be the best way for me.
It's an option that you'll be prompted for during the installation. It should ask you this, you'll select the "Custom" option, then you should have the option to choose what partition, etc and finish installing. Just a reminder that when reformatting, you will lose all files, so make a backup of your important documents!.
This is a nice step by step article: How To Format C From a Windows Setup Disc Remember that if you have any files you want to keep make sure to copy them off to a USB or other safe location before the format. Also don't forget other things like favorites/bookmarks, game saves, AppData etc.
i have a few games downloaded.League of legends TF2 minecraft and a few other steam games is there anything from them i shld save? im not really worried bout any of the other files i have like bookmarks favs etc.
You can make a backup of those steam games, to DVD or USB. There's nothing really to backup from LoL or TF2, but you'd definitely want to backup your .minecraft folder, located at c:\Users\<username>\AppData\.minecraft, which contains all your world saves etc. Some other steam games like Borderlands 2 will have save games that you might want to back up too!
What do you mean by "better"? Do you mean easier? Faster? Do you want a program that will re-write the drive so no information is lingering/recoverable?
You may not have to reformat though, what programs have you tried to use to remove the malware? Maybe we can recommend some programs to get that resolved so you don't have to reformat/reinstall
With steam you can access your save games from any computer. Same with Tf2 items and Lol your champs and stuff are Account-bound. I would be careful when you back up your minecraft because it may been infected as well.
ive tried using kerpersky malwarebytes mcafee and avg....and when i format i DO NOT want any of the windows files left behind because the problem is that something is either infected my svchost.exe or is accesing and stealing my ram and cpu, and often my dcom server or upnp will shut down forcing my laptop to restart. this happens alot and is really annoying. there have also been ads playing in the background but they have stopped for awhile now.
Formatting means completely erasing the disc. That will require you to reinstall windows and ALL programs ALL files EVERYTHING that you had on your computer before. The windows format that comes with the installation disc is as good as any...unless you want some special additional functionality. When infected with a virus, unfortunately, the best thing to do is often format & reinstall, as it can take weeks to diagnose and figure out which files are infected due to the complexity of windows. So no, the best thing you can do for your computer is to format and reinstall windows. (
Well if we're being technical, reformatting usually just deletes the master file table, which maps out where all the files are on the disc without actually deleting the files. The actual files still remain, the drive just doesnt know where to find them. But with a good program that reformats, it will re-write zeros over the entire drive so the old information is completely gone. OP doesn't need that though, I just like playing the devils advocate sometimes
*If* we're being technical, a quick format in windows deletes the master file table, a full format in windows deletes the master file table and checks the drive integrity. A normal full format would overwrite the entire surface of the drive with 1's or 0's or a combination of both. Even then, the information is not completely gone, although at that point it would be very hard to recover without some seriously specialized equipment. A drive wiper program (such as DBAN) rewrites 1's and 0's multiple times over the drive to prevent this.
i want all files removed just to be sure the virus/malware is actually gone so i should use DBAN rite
