Formatting Hard Drive

[esburrito]

I think I got some sort of hack (yay!) after downloading something. All my keychain stuff was erased, a lot of little programs keep asking for access to the internet (none of which I have seen before) and my clock got reset. And I'm sure other things I'm not sure of.

Whether this is a real hack or virus or whatever or not, I would feel more comfortable just erasing my hard drive and restoring it all.

I have a back up hard drive which I use with Time Machine.

Now, what I want to do is format the hard drive, reinstall OSX (btw, running 10.6.2), then restore everything using Time Machine to a couple of days ago before I downloaded what probably carried it in.

Is this how I would do this?

(Help ASAP is much appreciated. Still a bit of a mac n00b, and I have a lot to do on my computer very soon, so I don't have much time to deal with this.)

 

[BlueRevolution]

I think I got some sort of hack (yay!) after downloading something.

What did you download?

Now, what I want to do is format the hard drive, reinstall OSX (btw, running 10.6.2), then restore everything using Time Machine to a couple of days ago before I downloaded what probably carried it in.

Is this how I would do this?

Yes. The restore disks that came with your computer should walk you through the process, including prompting you to restore from a backup if your Time Machine drive is connected.