After infection, any files safe to backup?

My wife has managed to get a nasty Hijacker, which I've been able to tamp down but not completely remove with the initial steps (I didn't do the optional scans yet) listed here in the basic removal section.

I was planning to follow the rest of the guide, but then decided that since she only has a 5gb hard drive, it may be more time effective just to go ahead and buy her the new HD we've been contemplating.

My question is, do CoolWWWSearch and its kin infect everything on the hard drive? Or would it be safe to backup things like word documents and/or outlook express dbx files? Internet Explorer bookmarks?

Thanks for your help,

Z

 

I seem to have misplaced the edit button, so I'm just going to reply to myself. I realized after I posted that it might be helpful to have a description of what was going on to answer the above question.

Basically, anytime IE was opened, it would redirect her to another site. Her home page is normally set to Blank, but it had been changed to default, and all attempts to change it back to Blank would not take hold. Eventually, IE was blocked from visiting certain sites, such as Majorgeeks. (She had not installed any of the XP updates in some time, it turns out.)

After following the initial sequence of instructions here, and updating her XP with all the current patches, I've managed to get her computer to visit sites that were being blocked, but the home page is still being directed to default and sometimes on opening IE it will be redirected.

I'm assuming this is going to take some of the more aggressive options described in the basic thread, so I just wanted to check on the backup and fresh install strategy before I continued. Thanks once more,

Z

 

Thanks Chaslang. Got the new drive up and running, with the additional protection you linked. Gave the backed up files a thorough check on the CD before reinstalling them, and everything is working beautifully. Appreciate the help!

Z