Today I got a whole bunch of stuff from a friend on my external hard-drive, and only after I had plugged it in did I realise that he probably has a virus.
His laptop is a top of the range alien-ware laptop, but it lagged heavily even opening files, and it refused to open task manager. I asked him about it and he says that his anti-virus is broken, and he probably has a virus but is not sure (he knows very little about computers and how much 8 gigs of RAM is etc). I do not know for sure that he has a virus, but his laptop cost an amount that I can only dream of, but lagged when the only thing running was windows explorer. He is bleak that it is lagging, but has no idea of just how much it should not be.
I now have a hard-drive full of stuff I want but with a powerful virus on it. Will disabling autorun/autoplay stop it from spreading as soon as I plug it into my pc? If so how do you disable it? I Googled a bit but people disagreed about it. I think I have disabled it, but want to be totally sure.
If disabling autorun works then will it be sufficient to just scan the hard-drive with MSE?
If not how do I format it without it infecting my pc? Should I just nuke it with a huge magnet and wipe everything off? Will this mess with the boot sector or something if I do?
His laptop is a top of the range alien-ware laptop, but it lagged heavily even opening files, and it refused to open task manager. I asked him about it and he says that his anti-virus is broken, and he probably has a virus but is not sure (he knows very little about computers and how much 8 gigs of RAM is etc). I do not know for sure that he has a virus, but his laptop cost an amount that I can only dream of, but lagged when the only thing running was windows explorer. He is bleak that it is lagging, but has no idea of just how much it should not be.
I now have a hard-drive full of stuff I want but with a powerful virus on it. Will disabling autorun/autoplay stop it from spreading as soon as I plug it into my pc? If so how do you disable it? I Googled a bit but people disagreed about it. I think I have disabled it, but want to be totally sure.
If disabling autorun works then will it be sufficient to just scan the hard-drive with MSE?
If not how do I format it without it infecting my pc? Should I just nuke it with a huge magnet and wipe everything off? Will this mess with the boot sector or something if I do?
