Removing photos from infected computer

Nick1881 · 29 Apr 2014 at 18:58

My brother and sister in law are useless with computers and their laptop is totally infested with virus, trojans, spyware and god knows what.

I've been trying to clean it a bit but nothing will touch it.

Is there a safe way to remove all their photos? Then I can format it and re-install. I don't want to risk bringing infected files onto the fresh install.

Thanks

linktoinsanity · 29 Apr 2014 at 20:31

Take the disk out, plug it into an external caddy, copy the photos over, run a virus scan on them (not that they should be infected), format computer and then copy them back again.

stopper · 29 Apr 2014 at 23:27

Email or upload to storage?

Nick1881 · 29 Apr 2014 at 23:29

Would it be safe to plug the drive into another computer?

Uploading would be good, not sure how much data they have in total though.

Craig321 · 29 Apr 2014 at 23:29

linktoinsanity said:
Take the disk out, plug it into an external caddy, copy the photos over, run a virus scan on them (not that they should be infected), format computer and then copy them back again.

Only risk with that is if there's some sort of autorun virus on there. They're quite rare so probably nothing to worry about, but as you say just scan after copying and it'll be fine

Hades · 29 Apr 2014 at 23:56

Use a Linux live distro CD. Boot into it then use that to copy any needed files to a memory stick or upload to an FTP site etc.

abbotsmike · 30 Apr 2014 at 01:14

Hades said:
Use a Linux live distro CD. Boot into it then use that to copy any needed files to a memory stick or upload to an FTP site etc.

Yup, always use a linux distro in situations like this. Arguably the easiest and safest option. Also the reason I always have a pre-loaded USB pen with linux and ubuntu live CD kicking around!

kitch9 · 30 Apr 2014 at 07:38

Nick1881 said:
Would it be safe to plug the drive into another computer?

Uploading would be good, not sure how much data they have in total though.

Yes, just don't click on any exe files. Maybe run Malwarebytes on the drive also.

kitch9 · 30 Apr 2014 at 07:39

Craig321 said:
Only risk with that is if there's some sort of autorun virus on there. They're quite rare so probably nothing to worry about, but as you say just scan after copying and it'll be fine

How can it autorun? Windows doesn't just run exes at random, it only runs exes it's told to run by the user.

KIA · 30 Apr 2014 at 09:50

Use a live Linux distro.

demonix · 30 Apr 2014 at 16:56

kitch9 said:
How can it autorun? Windows doesn't just run exes at random, it only runs exes it's told to run by the user.

The virus could put an autorun.ini file in the root of the hard drive, and if the computer it's being connected to doesn't ask what to do with certain files, it'll execute the required file and infect the connected computer with the virus.