Safe harddrive swapping?

[beef]

Okay, my buddy has a PC that is either full of spyware or infected with a virus. I was wonering if I could slap his harddrive as slave in my PC and use my software to find out what is wrong without (if it is a virus) infecting my PC? I was wondering because his PC is so slow that it takes forever to load etc... that this would be much easier as long as it would be safe to my PC.

 

[Wixard]

did you could try formatting it and reinstalling windows? Thatd be the easiest way. Id reccomend a full partition nuke, since some virus attach themselves to the partition table.

Depending on the virus some can infect all exe files, various windows system files etc. If it has multiple viruses just nuke it.

 

[mobiux]

I probably wouldnt put it as a slave.
It may not be all that dangerous, but why take that chance.

Most anitvirus programs let you create a set of floppy disks that you could use to scan his PC.

 

[BlindedByScience]

Couldn't you install an anti-virus package on your buddy's computer and scan it...?? If it boots and runs, even slowly, wouldn't that be the easiest thing to do....??

You could try McAfee's free on line scanner:

http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp

Good Luck - B.B.S.

 

[Wixard]

Few weeks ago my wifes computer had 3 viruses on it, the mcafee picked up 1 of them, while avg picked up all 3. Dont have much faith in mcafee.

 

[phasmatis_nox]

I had a slave drive with a virus on it from another computer. Infected my master drive. Probably depends on the virus though.

This was a the Gaobot/Lsass.exe/scvhost.exe virus or viri.