aLemmer

Problem

My client’s business laptop was infected with malware. It was required that the documents were recovered and that the laptop was cured.

Solution

Fortunately my client possessed a recovery disk that allowed for a fresh Windows XP installation. So rudimentarily, all I had to do was recover all of her work documents; conveniently, the documents were all located on the desktop.

Let’s start with back-ups

I always make a back-up before working on a PC. This assures that any wrongdoings can be reversed. I used a free utility called “Clonezilla”. Clonezilla allowed me to make an image of the hard-drive and create a back-up onto an external hard-drive.

Recovering data

I used Knoppix with F-PROT (both of which are free). Knoppix is a Live Linux CD, whereas F-PROT is a virus scanner. I used the Knoppix / F-PROT combination to: retrieve my client’s documents, create a back-up on a flash-drive, and scan the very files I backed up.

Wrapping up with re-installation & recovery

By using the recovery disk that came with my client’s laptop, I formatted the hard-drive and re-installed Windows XP. After installation, I copied the recovered documents from the flash-drive to the desktop (local hard-drive) as it was before.