Need help/definite answer please!

Hi, I'm changing over my possibly infected hard drive with a new one. I just want to make sure there's no way any kind of spyware will change over. I've heard some "you'll probably be okays" and some I've heard of spyware that can stay over but I've never seen it" and I was just wondering if there are some steps that I could take that would ensure I didn't get infected again.

I've scanned with a bunch of spyware scanners, and they've all been clean, but then people told me that it didn't matter if rootkits were involved. I know what they are but I don't really know how I would get them. I don't download weird files, and I'm not sure if you can get them through drive by infections. I have mozilla with noscript and windows defender and a firewall, but I keep getting answers of "it could happen but I'm not sure" so if anyone could tell me of something like reflashing the bios or something tghat would ensure that I didn't get reinfected, that would be so awesome. thanks for your time!

 

The bad news is that there is no way to be certain. The good news is that if you have used reliable and up-to-date scanners. There is an extremely good chance you will be ok. I also see that you do not mention any anti-virus program.

 

I had avg as well. I heard that it took a lot more to get a rootkit, or like you had to download a file or something, but I dunno.

Isn't there any way to ensure that when you switch your hard drive, you don't transfer anything? I feel as if there has to be at least a couple of preventative steps. Or that its not possible to cross infect, as I've heard from some people. anyone have some sort of definite answer?

 

The preventative steps are to scan your current system and make sure it is clean.

 

thats not supposed to help against rootkits. Not that I'm sure I have one, I just don't know how you get them. I was wondering if you can get them through drive-by infections or whatever, because I don't download weird files. And rootkits were the ones that I heard could nest in other areas of the pc, other than the hard drive.

 

There are scanners for rootkits. Many rootkits are on the harddrive. Rootkits can come from anywhere - even cd's. "Regular" malware can also hide in places besides the hard drives - mainly in memory.

If you think you are infected or want to know - follow our READ & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support

From there, we can start to determine if your system as clean.

 

I'm asking more from an informational standpoint. I will do the malware read and run first, in another topic. I'm just asking if it is possible to transfer over, and if malware hides in other places than the hard drive.


Your answer is contradicting some other answers that I have gotten, and supporting some, which, of course, confuses me even more. By hide in memory, what do you even mean? What memory? Which memory?


Someone told me that most of the "examples" of hiding in non-hard drive spaces have been false, or vaporware, as he put it. But, of course, some other people have mentioned that it "was possible" (without examples).

I'm just really confused.

 

They odds of malware transferring over to a different hard drive are very slim. That is why some will say it can't and others say it is possible. You may have a better chance winning the lottery than having the malware transfer to a different drive. As the one person put it - most cases are false but not impossible. The people that write malware are getting trickier by the day.

When malware hides in memory, it is usually RAM. This should not affect your situation of replacing the hard drive. It was just an example that sometimes once malware is loaded into memory that it will rewrite a file to load back up if it notices that you deleted it.

Just because something is possible does not mean it has happened yet. There is malware that has survived reformatting - there is malware that can affect BIOS - and it may be possible for them to find a way to make malware survive a BIOS flash.

It also depends on when you switch your hard drive on how you do it. Are you connecting it as a slave and copying files to it? Removing your current one, adding the other and start from scratch with install cd's?

To summarize: nothing is impossible just improbable

 

Thanks a lot dahli. I'm just a pretty paranoid person. My computer is acting strange, but I think its more the computer than anything else. I think it'd be harder for me to be infected anyway because I've scanned with counterspy, spybot, ad aware, windows defender, and avast, bitdefender, panda, and f-secure rootkit finder, and everything has come up clean. Its still acting a little weird though, but thats probably the computer.

I just really don't want anything to somehow transfer over. When I do an online search for it, though, I don't even get any pertinent results, which tells me that the odds of it happening are slim to none.

 

I understand. If you go through our steps and are declared clean - the odds of anything happening are EXTREMELY slim. You will be fine.

And to help you feel better, after transferring - you can always post again to have us check the new drive.