dual booting with infected xp ?

[bigvoo]

ok turns out my old machine's test came up about 20 megs short of being able to install ubuntu ( disc from magazine), I decided to install it on my main desktop, which as of monday is infected with the craziest trojan ever. If i run ubuntu on that machine, that trojan won't be able to live or function in linux right ? I will be wiping out xp all together after i get a few things out of there. but im just curiously watching this damn bug also. thanks for any advise and sorry if it's a dumb question.

[oz]

Your best option, in my opinion, would be to use a livecd to get whatever you want off the drive, then totally wipe the drive, then install the distro of your choice. No, the trojan shouldn't have any impact on Linux.

Let us know how it goes.

[twodayslate]

Most, if not all, Windows viruses/trojans do not affect Linux.

[waterhead]

If the trojan is hidden inside any of the files that you save, it could live again. If those files are accessed by another Windows PC, they will then infect that PC.

If your anti-virus cannot rid the PC of the trojan, then there is no guarantee that it has not infected the files that you want to keep. It won't hurt Linux, but beware of ever opening those files on Windows again.

[bigvoo]

thanks for the info... I think that os is a complete loss now, the (thing) attached itself to explorer.exe even microsoft claims it doesnt exist, but a few tech websites are reporting it... looks like ubuntu here i come. I think 2008 is going to be the worst year since the early 90's for windows based virus/malware attacks. thanks again.

[waterhead]

Can you give us some details about it? Like what it's called and how you think that you got it.

I still have WinXP on some PC's, and I would like to prevent this from happening to me. What type of anti-virus software are you running?

[bigvoo]

Not sure where it came from, but possible a video on youtube... if you do a google search for Explorer.exe trojan you'll see mixed opinions of it... cexx.org says it was born from a gambling site a few years ago, and another site said the reason no av scanner can find it, is because it binds to the real explorer.exe and cannot be removed without clean install. I have zonealarm firewall/av and ad-aware se. but since this thing started I've also tried avg and spyblaster and basically all the free stuff. the comp runs fine after a 5 minute startup---used to take about 40 seconds---. OH well, one more motivator to start using linux now.

[Freston]

If you're planning to build a dual boot, I suggest to reinstall XP first...it doesn't like to be second