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Question

Installing a Win 8 on an old Infected Vista machine

Oct 23, 2014 6:51PM PDT

hi Everyone
I have an old (7 yrs) Vista HP Laptop which I am somewhat attached to. It is infected and I want to install a Win 8 on it and get rith of Vista.

What do I do:
1) Do I install Win 8 on an Infected Vista Machine and then Install Norton security to clean it up the new Win 8 Install.
or
2) Do I Install Norton Security , clean up the machine and then install Win 8.

In both cases I will back up and restore my old data directories.

TIA

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: install
Oct 23, 2014 8:30PM PDT

What I would do:
1. Backup my data.
2. Backup the backup (so I have 2 copies)
3. Use a partition manager to delete all partitions on the hard disk
4. Install Windows 8 on the now very empty disk
5. Check the data on the backup device for viruses
6. Restore the clean data

Be sure not to use a proprietary backup program. Just copy the folders.


Kees

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Vista to Windows 8.1
Oct 27, 2014 5:52AM PDT

I still have my old Vista laptop. I never bothered to upgrade it to Windows 7 since there would have been driver issues. Make sure that there are Windows 8 drivers for your old machine and if so, locate them online and download so that you have them ready when you proceed.

By the way, I bought a new laptop that came with 8 and had an automatic/free upgrade to 8.1 Skipped 7 altogether.