Grandpa got a virus?

[ride2bhi]

Ok, so my grandpa is computer literate but sometimes gets sucked into the tricks people pull sending out e-mail viruses. He recently had major problems with his computer that we have traced back to a virus. We decided to go ahead and install a new hard drive into the master slot, and do a fresh install of XP. My question is whether or not it would be wise to install the old master drive into the slave position to access some of the files that are on it? Of course we would run a virus scan on it and hopefully track down what is causing the problems before we transfer any data to the new hard drive. Would there be any chance of the old drive infecting the new one? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[Cubsfan]

I'd get a virus scanner and run it in "Real-Time" protection. This will basically scan every file that gets opened at all. Also, before you do anything, just do a quick scan of the second hard drive.

Chances are that the second hard drive isn't going to infect the first if you don't run any programs off of it.

[GilbertsGrape]

um... and ofcourse the first thing you should do is install the newest dat files or virus deffinitions

[Joshua]

And after that, you should write "I will not post software questions in the Hardware forum" 500 times! :P

Good luck with the virus though!

[ride2bhi]

My bad, figured it was a hard drive problem so I put it here. Was just curious if this was the best way to set up the computer using the same IDE as slave and master or if I should put them on separate cables to avoid infection.