eh....whenever I've been bitten with a nasty I've usually found the amount of time required to fix it to be prohibitive, and even then one is never really sure that they are clean...

firstly: partition your HDD so that 20-30GB is alloted for your OS an such....the rest being for data storage...acquired stuff and move it to the storage partition...what this scenario does is allows you to fairly quickly backup your data (by moving it to the secondary partition) and then reformat and do a clean install of your OS...this of course makes it so that you don't have to use CDs and DVDs...this method also allows for much quicker defragmentation times as one is only dealing with 20-30GB of area, not a full drive...

second: install another HDD, and even perhaps go so far as to create a dual boot system with an OS on each of the primary partitions of the HDDs....if an OS goes south you have another for immediate use, and many times you can remotely repair the damaged OS...also, when moving data for storage do it from HDD to HDD as this is about 2x as fast!

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
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