Do I have to wipe ALL my drives in order to remove any threat?

[LuckyTheLadyBug]

Hello Tom's

I think my computer may be a bot-net for a DDoS attack. Is it safe to keep my HDD (with steam games, LOTS OF PERSONAL FILES, ect intact and just Wipe the OS drive and re-install windows? Or does every drive have to be wiped clean?

Even if I'm not part of a bot-net, I still like doing fresh installs every year or so.

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

This all depends.
Whatever you downloaded that infected your machine and caused it to be a botnet participant...where does that original file live?

 

[LuckyTheLadyBug]

This all depends.
Whatever you downloaded that infected your machine and caused it to be a botnet participant...where does that original file live?

I dont know how to check that.

I could be 100% wrong about it, maybe the video from paul's hardware just got me.

The reason I say this is because i will have random ping/ usage spikes for only a few seconds at a time. That is one of the symptoms.

As long as I dont carry over any executable should I be fine?