Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The Cost of Reinstalling Windows: Part I

On Monday night I downloaded and installed a Trojan, believing it to be a legitimate file. If I had been using NOD32, the trojan would have been caught. I wasn't, but that's another story. Now I have to erase my hard drive and reinstall everything. No, I won't be installing Windows Vista, thank you. Been there, done that.
I spent most of Tuesday recovering from shock and trying to explain to eEye why I think that Blink Personal Security didn't provide me with any security at all. And I'm sorry, but 90% isn't good enough. Condoms are more secure.
Last time I installed WinXP on Penny's broken laptop I measured the total download volume required to get Windows XP SP2 up to date. It was around 90MB. This time I'm going to be a bit more realistic, and include all the downloads and all the patches required, not only for Windows, but OfficeXP and 65 other programs that I have to install.
I also plan to document how long this all takes, so this blog entry is going to be an ongoing one for the next few days. It's now 2pm and I have backed up all the data files I need, either on DVD, CD or another hard drive. Time to reboot and insert the WinXP SP2 boot disk.
Update:
2:10pm: Boot up off Windows XP SR2 CD, delete C: partition.
2:15pm: Slow format of C: partition begins.
2:42pm: Windows installer reboots from C: drive for the first time.
2:50pm: Type in Product Key, other machine name details.
3:22pm: First desktop. Install NOD32 from flash drive, begin definitions update.
3:48pm: NOD32 scan stops on D: drive files. Damn! Infection still around somewhere, or a corrupted file perhaps. Take no chances: wipe the entire drive.
Insert DBAN CD and begin wiping entire hard drive. This will take a while (i.e. all night). So far the PC has downloaded 8.11MB, uploaded 392kb. What a way to spend a birthday.

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