Hi! When it comes to malware, I know a good amount about several things.... but there are also gaping holes in that. This question will affect whether I can do certain parts of my work today. I just finished cleaning a lot of spyware and viruses off of someone's PC, and during that time I saved some of the reports generated, and created some cut-&-pasted docs (including one as a Word file) to a floppy. But I also had some pre-existing docs on that disk, Word, text and .pdf files, that now I'm not sure I should open on any other PC since that machine was still infected when I was using the floppy in it. Can I safely view any of the docs on the disk? I know I could scan it/them with my AV software, but that wouldn't detect the other malware... Would it be enough to scan it at Trendmicro or Panda? Or is there no reason to worry at all? Thanks!!

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the floppy has been infected. Before the Internet, that was the most common way of spreading viruses. They would integrate themselves into the boot sector. Boot sector viruses are rare these days as they are so easily detected. A scan through almost any anti-virus application will take care of that. As for other malware, I would say it is extremely unlikely. They only thing to be wary of is that you haven't transfered any macros with the Word files. I have never heard of .PDF files being compromised. They do seem to be pretty resilient. Stuart

Thanks Stuart! Sounds like it's a small enough risk. :o)