Does my "factory restored" Dell still have the sdbot virus?

Question

A Geek Squad guy told me that my Dell Inspiron 600m was infected with the sdbot trojan virus. I used Ctrl+f11 at boot to do a "factory restore," where it wipes and re-formats your hard-drive so that the computer acts like its right out of the box.

Is there any chance that sdbot survived? Nothing bad's happened, I'm just nervous.

And also, should I be wary of re-attaching my external hard drive? All it has on it are music files and Word documents; is there any way that they could've been infected, too?

Answer 1

If you turned off the machine prior to the reboot, the sdbot is gone. Even if you didn't, it's 99% likely to be gone, but on a purely theoretically level it could have remained in memory.

The factory restore wipes out all of the infected files along with the rest of the operating system- you're good to go.

It's certainly possible for word documents to be infected with macro viruses, but you had a trojan which is a different animal. The external drive is probably fine, but to be safe- just be sure to install anti-virus and anti-spyware software on your computer before reconnecting it.

Answer 2

the main thorough way, however the longest, could be to reformat the not easychronic, i might in basic terms try this as a final hotel because you are going to lose each thing on that not easychronic. a million .turn your computing device on, open the CD tray and insert the restoration disk, i think of that's categorized working device that's been a at a similar time as because I owned a Dell, and close down the computing device. 2. Restart it and press F8, it may take you to a black show screen with white text fabric asking what you want besides from. 3. elect boot from CD. A blue show screen with white writing could arise asking you what you want to do. elect format. persist with the on show screen training. that's going to take everywhere from half-hour to 2 hours to get each thing lower back to a production facility situation installation, looking on your computing device's overall performance. you additionally can could reinstall the drivers while abode windows is lower back up. they are all got here across on the restoration CD. in case you're uncertain or my training are not clean sufficient, browse around on the cyber web. There are some sturdy websites that can clarify in better element and function step by skill of step photos.

Answer 3

Before you wgo and re-format it all and lose everything, try doing some scans.

http://pack.google.com
Google Pack has a 9 Month Norton Virus Scanner. Heres Nortons instrustion of removing it http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2002-051312-3628-99&tabid=1

You can also use McAfee 30 Day trial just to remove the virus.
http://us.mcafee.com/root/downloads.asp?id=freeTrials

Since its a Trojan... AVG Free usually detects alot of Trojans (I use AVG). AVG Virus Protector is a free virus protector that many users use. http://free.grisoft.com/doc/29116/us/frt/0


if you are planning to scan before remove, plug the external harddrive back in so it can be scanned also