So a few days ago, the computer my sisters use got hit with some sort of virus or otherwise nasty malware, and I was put in charge of fixing it. I got the comp usable again by dual-booting it with Ubuntu so they could still get online, and installed Avast under Wine so I could scan the Windows partition without any interference. I had a feeling a lot of problems were in their Temp caches, so I just cleared those out-of-hand (and that cut down on some of the warnings Avast gave me before I decided to do so). Doing so also freed up about 4 gigs of space on that partition.
Well, the bigger problem is that it detected that pagefile.sys was infected. I know what the file does (the virtual memory store/swapspace; I also know it being infected means that Windows would re-infect itself every time it restarts), but seeing the options I have in front of me here, I want to know - before I try it - if Windows automatically regenerates a clean pagefile.sys on boot if it doesn't find it, or if it not finding it will make the system unusable from the get-go and require being scrapped and restored from scratch.
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Is the pain of not knowing, worth the price of saying nothing?
You should be able to delete it without issue, Windows should recreate it (It's for the virtual memory)
If they have 4G of memory & they're not a game user, you should be able to get away with just turning it off completely.
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Isaiah 8:12-13 (NIV) "Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread."
I don't even use pagefile. I have it set to save nothing to it. It may slow a couple things like startup, but it speeds up my computer for recording.
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It'll still be fine to delete the pagefile. Windows will just create a new one.
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Joshua 1:8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
2 Timothy 3:15 But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
It'll still be fine to delete the pagefile. Windows will just create a new one.
Yes, I found this out by experience when I went back into Windows (although because I'd been physically moving data off the Windows partition to an external HDD it took quite a long time for Windows to rebuild its index to correctly reflect the state of the partition's files).
It's still not been completely *fixed* to my liking, though. The weird virus appears to be gone, but I won't give them the go-ahead to use Windows again until I've exhausted AdAware, SpyBot (plus immunizing), MalwareBytes, Avast! (under Windows itself this time), and made sure they all come back clean, and then run CCleaner and Defraggler to catch registry issues, defrag the hard drive, and then use the secure wipe on the free space. There's also some minor Firefox tweaking I need to do.
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