REFORMAT GO

Ok, I have a very blatant and very annoying virus. No scanners pick it up, I can't find a firewall tool that finds logs for the virus reporting back to anyone, and it pops up every half hour to 45 minutes as an unnamed, un-icon'ed program in the taskbar for a fraction of a second. However, when it comes up, it focuses the desktop on that program...if I'm playing a game and DirectX does not have control of the display directly (i.e.: menus), it will swap to that viral program. But that's not the case.

I've decided that I will scan all my data twice over and reformat my system hard drive. I've also heard that keeping system images of a pristine installation of XP is a good idea. So...
I think I will move all of my C: data to a secondary HDD and reformat my system drive. Should I make a partition *just* for XP and partition the remainder for actual data? And is there any way I could do an XP reinstall without moving everything? I've heard of such a possible method, but I doubt if I could repartition the drive....so I prithee! CAN I MAKE AN XP AND XP GHOST IMAGE PARTITION WITHOUT HAVING TO MOVE DATA!? (Probably not, so...) What size partition will I need to reinstall XP to? Any websites out there that might describe the process of such a technique?

Here is the one website that will answer all of your questions:
www.google.com

No, you'll have to move your data. You could do with three partitions really: one for Windows, one for Program Files and one for Documents and Settings. This way you can get away with keeping the Windows partition as small as possible because it will hardly grow at all. About 2GB should be enough.

Once you've got Windows set up exactly how you want it, Ghost it onto something; ideally a DVD or a small hard drive that you will then remove so that any viruses you pick up can't write to it. When your Windows install gets fucked up, simply format it and dump the image on top of it; no painful reinstallation necessary.

I'm not sure if Windows allows mounting drives to arbitrary points in the filesystem though, you'll have to look up how do do that.

In conclusion, use Lunix lol.

>>2
I hate to hijack this thread but I have to say something. Anytime someone posts a question in /g/ a bunch of people have a shitfit and tell them to come here. When a question gets posted here someone always has to say google (I get the feeling everyone saying google doesnt know shit anyway), and most of the replies are just trolls. If you cant see my point here it is: SHUT THE FUCK UP. If you dont like the questions than ignore them, even though they ARE supposed to be here.

>>4
Or maybe if people didn't ask retarded questions they wouldn't get retarded answers. AND 99% OF THE QUESTIONS POSTED HERE COULD BE ANSERWED BY ONE FUCKING SIMPLE GOOGLE SEARCH.
Now stfu and gfto.

The "99%" of searchable questions are asked here (and EVERY OTHER COMPUTER DISCUSSION FORUM ON THE INTERNET) simply because someone who's inexperienced likes to know that someone who is more experienced either agrees with them or has a better suggestion for their solution.

Not that anyone trolling comp looking for "gb2google" posts would know about personal interactions of the sort.

>>5
I was going to type out a big response but since you couldnt even be bothered to type out words I'll just keep it short: Fuck you, you are nothing.

>>5
lol

>>6
wow did you know that this is the internet you dumb faggot?