The Shrine

I have a relative that wants me install his hard drive on my computer so that I can run my virus scan on his hard drive, download helpful utilities like Zone Alarm, Search and Destroy, Adaware, y'know the whole ball and wax.

Now I don't want to sound paranoid but I need to know if attaching a hard drive that is sure to be infected with god knows how many virus plus trojans, worms, whatever (y'see, he was online on his broadband for almost a year with only the pathetic ICF to protect him (no service pack 2 either) on my computer will compromise my system?

Yeah... I'm surprised his computer hadn't exploded by now.

The answer is no, unless you decide to start clicking on some .exe files and .dll files and executing programs on your PC from his harddrive. Oh, and all of that crap (virus software, ad aware, search and destroy ect ect) only catches at most half of the shit that's on there. I'd tell your relative to just back up his word documents and music on to your pc (AVOID THE PROGRAM FILES AND WINDOWS FOLDERS LIKE THE PLAGUE) and just uninstall/reinstall windows XP, get service pack 2 on there and all the updates. Then I'd teach your relative not to click on things that say "Enter your e-mail address" or "your computer is at risk for viruses" because those things are bullshit anyway, and if he wants to play online poker, www.888poker.com.

Barret's probably right. It sounds like it would be less effort to backup his important data, format the drive, reinstall the OS and then reinstall his programs.

Install SpyBot with the TeaTimer on it. It warns the user of any registry edits. If he's installing crap, he can just say okay on the warnings, but if he's not doing anything that would seem to require the registry, he can block that shit.