[organized_chaos]

sometimes on my computer im using right now (an XP) if it gets to bad, i put a disk in and its suppose to erase all the files and programs and stuff i think, then i put another disk in to reinstall XP, could i use those two disks on my 98 i might be getting?

[tommyboy123x]

yeah, i call them kill disks... do you mean floppy disks, right?

what those do is they overwrite everything on your hard drive X number of times... which make the data unrecoverable. Theoretically you could make a virus that will still be "alive" by simply reformatting.

Think of it this way. You take a pencil and write the word "DISK" with normal hand writting (not too light). "Erasing" it makes it still visible, which is like reformatting. Taking the pencil, and overwriting it with scribbles and such, makes it almost impossible to find out what you wrote.

but theoretically, you could also make your ocmputer into a robot...... heh, im gonna make a virus that turns your computer into a robot that when u put in a CD, it cuts it up and uses it as a saw... then the hard drives are wheels and it attacks you with it :rolleyes::eek: :amazed: :wooha:

...theory is not everything

[organized_chaos]

Originally posted by tommyboy123x

but theoretically, you could also make your ocmputer into a robot...... heh, im gonna make a virus that turns your computer into a robot that when u put in a CD, it cuts it up and uses it as a saw... then the hard drives are wheels and it attacks you with it :rolleyes::eek: :amazed: :wooha:

you could do that?! kewl

Originally posted by tommyboy123x

what those do is they overwrite everything on your hard drive X number of times... which make the data unrecoverable. Theoretically you could make a virus that will still be "alive" by simply reformatting.

Think of it this way. You take a pencil and write the word "DISK" with normal hand writting (not too light). "Erasing" it makes it still visible, which is like reformatting. Taking the pencil, and overwriting it with scribbles and such, makes it almost impossible to find out what you wrote.

so reformating it wouldnt get rid of the virus? is there a way to delete everything on the computer... start from scratch like when u buy a PC brand new?

[talldude123]

Tommyboy is wrong.

When you reformat a hard drive, you completely erase everything on it, so it's completely bare.

When its bare, you install an OS onto it, and once that's finished, you update it. As long as you watch which websites you go onto, you shouldn't get viruses.

[organized_chaos]

i used a floppy to reformat my hard drive and when i reinstalled XP i had all my data for Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 (games i enjoy playing) so i didnt have to restart those games. so if tommoyboy is wrong then maybe im not remformating the hard drive.. what would i be doing?

[tommyboy123x]

are you kidding? the data still there and completelly readable... the only thing is the OS does not read it as files, but simply empty space (mft zone?).

try googling "erase hard drive" and you'll see how you need to get a "kill disk" in order to ERASE it. There is a way for the virus to continue to function (if it was programmed correctly... but it would be very hard).

all of your data will be lost unless you get some hard core hardware to recover it. The department of security (US) recommends overwriting your data 3 times, i think, to make it unrecoverable. This other guy recommends 35 tiems and made an algorythm.

most likely, if not for sure, your virus(es) will be gone by simply reinstalling windows, or removing all the files form your "Temp" folder. If you can boot it up and it is just really slow, then just download ad-aware and put some software on it to remove the virus


The bottom line is, your data will be gone, as well as the virus (which has probably a 99.99999999999999999999999% chance of being deleted)

you should always back up your data before reformatting, because it will be unrecoverable unless it is specially saved somehow (and i dont know how)

[organized_chaos]

so how do i go about doing dual boot?

[Biggie578]

You have to partition your hard drive with a program like partition magic. Then Windows will read your HDD as 2 seperate hard drives and you can install a second OS onto the new blank partition. If the 2nd OS is also windows. Im not exactly sure if it lets u choose which OS to boot from, but you could install something like GRUB that detects all OS's and lets u choose which to boot from