Critical System Protection

Hello, it seems that I got a few nasty trojans etc. (e.g. trojan.gen). Norton couldn't even start scanning in safe mode... (I have Norton 360 3.0). My question: I don't mind to format the HD and reinstall the computer, but what about my documents, are infections not hiding in them? Because I will backup my documents etc. (around 80 GB), and then I will copy my backed up documents back on the newly installed computer. Is there not a risk of reinfecting my new system? And if yes, what can I do?

Thanks a lot for some advice

Petr

Macro Viruses are very Rare these days..so by documents if you mean documents of MS Office Doc (word,ppt,excel ), Songs,Movies,Images..then there isn't a prob..
but when you start backing up exe,sys,dll and other files then there could be a problem..
However you can scan your machine once with a 3rd party AV software.

Let's assume that the office documents are infected. Copying them does not spread the virus to other files. Scanning as soon as you finish copying the files will do. But, I'm assuming you're backing up to a USB drive. So scan that after doing a fresh install before transfering the files back.