Copying "Works" files from virus-infected computer

jacer

Distinguished
Mar 14, 2006
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18,510
I'm wondering if it's safe to do that. I would guess that individual documents wouldn't be infected. I wouldn't want to infect my new computer.

Afterwards, I plan to reformat the drive and re-install the operating system. The infected machine is an older one, so I may use it for simple word processing or older games or give it away.

I know that reformating won't destroy old files beyond recovery but I'd hope it would take care of any viruses. I don't have any personal economic info on it since I haven't used a program like Quicken or Money.

I know the machine has at least one virus (about.com) and may have others since many of the programs that should take care of this stopped working after I installed Windows Service Pack 2.

I gather others had similar problems after doing the same. Perhaps the most annoying is that I can't access the icons on the bottom of the screen. That includes files you minimize. Thanks for any help.
 

sturm

Splendid
safest way to move the files would be to burn them to a cd. Make sure you have an anti-virus on the second computer and scan them before copying to the computer.

Doing a full format and reinstall will take care of the viruses.
 

Codesmith

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Jul 6, 2003
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No file can harm your computer unless its opened, so you can copy the contents of a virus infected hard drive to your system and nothing bad will happen until you try to open the wrong file.

Just scan with updated AV software after transfering.

Just don't do anything dumb like accidentally boot from the infected HD, or browse the contents of the HD with your AV software disabled.