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Three phases of the image restore process

Now you have an infected computer and your backup image of C-drive (hopefully not too outdated).

Restore process consists of three distinct phases:

  1. Backup of your infected C partition using disk imaging program such as Acronis Image, Ghost, etc. I recommend Acronis Image.
  2. Creation of the Delta Tree on a USB drive for subsequence resynchronization of your data with older copy that you restore. This Delta Tree can be real or virtual. In the latter case you need to use some application like rsync (via Cygwin),  Microsoft Windows Live Sync (Windows Vista and Windows 7 only), or some shareware data synchronization program like ViceVersa PRO, Automatic USB Backup & Synchronize,  Automatic USB Backup to name just a few.  
  3. Restoration of image from the back and merging of the "Delta Tree" with the restored backup.

Even if Windows is no longer bootable you still need first to recover files from the C-drive that are not on your image.  The best way to do it is to create a full backup of inflected drive using Acronis or Ghost and then recover files from this image. Do it using bootable CD recovery disk to prevent any interference from malware that infected your computer or, better from an alternative bootable USB drive. 

Then after you restored the image you need to merge your updates with the image. This is more tricky process. But if you are afraid to hose your system you can generally avoid it.

The key idea of Softpanorama restoration strategy is to boot Windows from the recovery partition of your USB drive and perform this process methodically without any rush. If you do not have recovery partition get a small USB drive (64G solid state is enough -- and has advantage that it will survive if you accidentally drop it)  and restore your latest image of C drive to this drive first.

Never rush recovery process

This way you can work without any rush: there are too many cases when important data were lost when people try to recover from infection in a rush and this is probably were the most damage from malware occurs.

Don't rush the recovery process. There are too many cases when important data were lost when people try to recover from infection in a rush and this is probably were the most damage from malware occurs.  You can also accidentally reinfect the restored C partition and need to repeat this process again. It happen with me couple of times.

Booting from a recovery partition with a full copy of your C: partition from a bootable USB drive (or bootable partition on your large drive) gives you two advantages:

Take extra time to prepare to restore the infected drive: read your own instructions or this page -- many things you probably forgot from the last case you use this strategy. I usually do.

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Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

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Last modified: March, 12, 2019