On 29/03/05 21:25 +0530, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote: <snip>
I have been using winxp for 3 years now and we dont need to do format installtation. That is the excuse normally given by hardware vendors who
I recommend formatting and reinstalling if you get a virus infection. This is the same advice that I give for r00ted Unix systems.
You may be able to avoid getting virus infections with proper use of non administrative accounts, filesystem ACLs, registry edits and ACLs, not using IE (which means that nothing should use IE), staying patched, updated, firewalled (including a full fledged application layer gateway for HTTP content scanning), and then some luck.
But without all that, you really aren't defended against viruses/worms/rootkits/other malware.
Devdas Bhagat