Will the upgrade to windows 10 make a fresh registry?

[MeesL]

Hello everyone =].

I have been considering upgrading to windows 10 ever since it was announced. Now that I hear a lot of positive reactions I am convinced.
There is one thing however that I am not quite sure about: "Will an in-place upgrade of win7 to win10 overwrite the entire registry?"

The case is that I have got some trojan deep in my Registry, I can't get it out. That is not a problem per sé, because my antivirus blocks is from any further harm.
The fact that it's not harming my system doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it annoys the living daylight out of me that I can't get it fixed.

My best solution was upgrading to windows 10, but it won't solve anything if it keeps the same registry files.


TLDNR:
I have got a virus in my windows registry which I cannot get out, the solution was upgrading to windows 10.
The question is: Will an in-place upgrade to windows 10 make an entirely new registry or does it keep some of the old files?



Thanks in advance!
Mees =]

 

[USAFRet]

If it was there before, it will probably be there after.

 

[DrDanPhD]

Out of interest, is there anything preventing you from doing a full format/reinstall?

As an in place upgrade, it is likely that any previous registry entries or hooks would remain - else there would be issues making use of anything previously on the machine. I suppose it is possible that, should the Trojan be hidden as a windows entry, the installer would simply replace it with the correct version but I'd consider that extremely unlikely at best.

Why not complete the upgrade, then reset to a default, fresh version of Windows 10? That should eliminate the beastie for good as well.

 

[MeesL]

Out of interest, is there anything preventing you from doing a full format/reinstall?

As an in place upgrade, it is likely that any previous registry entries or hooks would remain - else there would be issues making use of anything previously on the machine. I suppose it is possible that, should the Trojan be hidden as a windows entry, the installer would simply replace it with the correct version but I'd consider that extremely unlikely at best.

Why not complete the upgrade, then reset to a default, fresh version of Windows 10? That should eliminate the beastie for good as well.

[I did not actually mean to close the topic by selecting a solution, my bad ]

Thanks for the reply!

The thing keeping me from doing a fresh install is the fact I use my pc for work, I am an editor. Now I know that I can just back up all my files, but I don't feel like going through the hassle of reinstalling and reconfiguring all my programs, there are about a thousand of em .
Besides that, I am an enthusiast gamer, especially with TES: Skyrim. I have got nearly a hundred mods installed and its really iffy move it over from OS to OS as it will cause some corruptions in saves (I've had it before).

I thought that a solution might be taking my SSD out of the system and install the OS on my HDD, then format the SSD and install the OS again on the formatted SSD. (there are no essential programs on the SSD, just photoshop but adobe creative cloud takes care of that).
But the question that raises with me, will this solution mess up the files and programs on the two other drives in the system?

Kind regards Mees

 

[USAFRet]

Out of interest, is there anything preventing you from doing a full format/reinstall?

As an in place upgrade, it is likely that any previous registry entries or hooks would remain - else there would be issues making use of anything previously on the machine. I suppose it is possible that, should the Trojan be hidden as a windows entry, the installer would simply replace it with the correct version but I'd consider that extremely unlikely at best.

Why not complete the upgrade, then reset to a default, fresh version of Windows 10? That should eliminate the beastie for good as well.

[I did not actually mean to close the topic by selecting a solution, my bad ]

Thanks for the reply!

The thing keeping me from doing a fresh install is the fact I use my pc for work, I am an editor. Now I know that I can just back up all my files, but I don't feel like going through the hassle of reinstalling and reconfiguring all my programs, there are about a thousand of em .
Besides that, I am an enthusiast gamer, especially with TES: Skyrim. I have got nearly a hundred mods installed and its really iffy move it over from OS to OS as it will cause some corruptions in saves (I've had it before).

I thought that a solution might be taking my SSD out of the system and install the OS on my HDD, then format the SSD and install the OS again on the formatted SSD. (there are no essential programs on the SSD, just photoshop but adobe creative cloud takes care of that).
But the question that raises with me, will this solution mess up the files and programs on the two other drives in the system?

Kind regards Mees

On my HTPC, I disconnected all drives except the SSD boot drive.
After the upgrade to 10, and reconnected the drives, nothing was lost. At all.
(including your trojan)

 

[MeesL]

Out of interest, is there anything preventing you from doing a full format/reinstall?

As an in place upgrade, it is likely that any previous registry entries or hooks would remain - else there would be issues making use of anything previously on the machine. I suppose it is possible that, should the Trojan be hidden as a windows entry, the installer would simply replace it with the correct version but I'd consider that extremely unlikely at best.

Why not complete the upgrade, then reset to a default, fresh version of Windows 10? That should eliminate the beastie for good as well.

[I did not actually mean to close the topic by selecting a solution, my bad ]

Thanks for the reply!

The thing keeping me from doing a fresh install is the fact I use my pc for work, I am an editor. Now I know that I can just back up all my files, but I don't feel like going through the hassle of reinstalling and reconfiguring all my programs, there are about a thousand of em .
Besides that, I am an enthusiast gamer, especially with TES: Skyrim. I have got nearly a hundred mods installed and its really iffy move it over from OS to OS as it will cause some corruptions in saves (I've had it before).

I thought that a solution might be taking my SSD out of the system and install the OS on my HDD, then format the SSD and install the OS again on the formatted SSD. (there are no essential programs on the SSD, just photoshop but adobe creative cloud takes care of that).
But the question that raises with me, will this solution mess up the files and programs on the two other drives in the system?

Kind regards Mees

On my HTPC, I disconnected all drives except the SSD boot drive.
After the upgrade to 10, and reconnected the drives, nothing was lost. At all.
(including your trojan)

Are you saying the Trojan is gone or not? And how does the system react to programs on the second drive, it should be messed up in the routing right?

Thanks!
Mees

 

[USAFRet]

Are you saying the Trojan is gone or not? And how does the system react to programs on the second drive, it should be messed up in the routing right?

Thanks!
Mees

I'm saying your Trojan will probably still exist. I'd get rid of that first.
And if you Upgrade, applications should still work, even if they live on a different drive.

 

[MeesL]

Are you saying the Trojan is gone or not? And how does the system react to programs on the second drive, it should be messed up in the routing right?

Thanks!
Mees

I'm saying your Trojan will probably still exist. I'd get rid of that first.
And if you Upgrade, applications should still work, even if they live on a different drive.

The problem is, I cant get rid of the Trojan. It's a script being executed on startup that downloads a bitcoin miner program. So what happens is, the antivirus sees that wscript.exe is trying to download a malicious file while its just a script that it runs.
I hoped an in-place windows update would solve this problem , but you're saying it probably wont because it keeps the root folder for all installed programs and thus the trojan hidden somewhere in there.
Then DrDanPhD is saying that a clean install would solve the problem, which it will. But then the programs on the second drive will be messed up, right?

Thanks for the help,
Mees =]

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, a clean install will wipe out any and all applications.
Those on the C will be completely wiped out. Those on other drives will have any associations wiped out, and need to be reinstalled anyway.

But your Trojan will be gone.

 

[MeesL]

Yes, a clean install will wipe out any and all applications.
Those on the C will be completely wiped out. Those on other drives will have any associations wiped out, and need to be reinstalled anyway.

But your Trojan will be gone.

Thanks for the advice, I will make up something out of all this and form a solution. Thanks again!

Mees