[driley]

This is just a theoretical question about a subject that "could" happen. If my os is infected with a virus and I am unable to clean and restore it to as was condition this means that I would have to reformat and re-install using my installation cd. Before I would do this, would it be safe to back up my documents, my music, my favorites, etc. for reinstallation after the redo or might they be infected as well. Has anyone encountered this problem?

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Prior to performing any backups of your documents you should scan them all with a good and up-to-date antivirus program. If everything comes up clean you make back ups of them. Having done that, and provided the backups are on a CD or DVD rather than on a local disk, you know for sure those backups will always be clean. You can of course put the backups on a separate partition or on second hard drive, but that leaves them accessible to any viruses you may get in the future.

Another thing you must do after cleaning up an infection is delete all your Restore Points or there is a risk you'll restore the infection next time you use SR. Restore points are deleted by turning off SR. Whether you turn it on again to start making new restore points is up to you.

[phillip22]

Prior to performing any backups of your documents you should scan them all with a good and up-to-date antivirus program. If everything comes up clean you make back ups of them. Having done that, and provided the backups are on a CD or DVD rather than on a local disk, you know for sure those backups will always be clean. You can of course put the backups on a separate partition or on second hard drive, but that leaves them accessible to any viruses you may get in the future.

Another thing you must do after cleaning up an infection is delete all your Restore Points or there is a risk you'll restore the infection next time you use SR. Restore points are deleted by turning off SR. Whether you turn it on again to start making new restore points is up to you.

[driley]

phillip22, thank you for your excellent answer.