Can a virus/malware spread through windows live id shared settings?

debugcn Published at Dev

Adam Butler

I replaced a harddisk in a computer that was previously filled with viruses and malware and reinstalled windows 10 from scratch. When the owner set up their windows live account some settings like their old wallpaper came across. Could viruses or malware come across too? I do not use the windows live login myself, am unsure what it is called and cant find much detail on exactly what settings are shared?

DavidPostill

Could viruses or malware come across too?

Short answer:

No, Programs (including Viruses or Malware) are not synced between Windows 10 Live Accounts.

Longer answer:

See below for details on what is shared.

What settings are shared?

In Windows 10, the sync settings have been relocated to the Accounts group and are now known as “Sync your settings”. Further, the number of choices has been pared down to seven, which is far more manageable to the average non-power user.

The first option is to simply turn off sync settings altogether. This means essentially that your account on that particular computer, even though it is a Microsoft account, is local. No changes you make to any of the settings then on that particular Windows 10 computer will replicated on other computers you log into with that same account.

Below the master sync switch are the individual sync settings. These are the settings that will carry over from one computer to the other that you log into with your Microsoft account.

The first settings all are fairly self-explanatory. The “Theme” setting will sync your color and background choices, meaning that if you want each of your Windows 10 installations to have their own, this needs to be off.

Then you have your “Web browser settings”. The new default browser in Windows 10 is the Edge browser, so this sync setting will apply to that, be it bookmarks, themes, logins, and so forth.

Finally, any passwords you store on one Windows 10 machine can be synced to the others so you don’t have to always retype them all.

The second half of the settings deal with “Language preferences”, which is useful if you use Windows multilingually.

Similarly, if you use the “Ease of Access” sync settings, then whatever adjustments you have made on one machine to its accessibility will carry over to all your Windows machines.

Finally, there’s the rather vague “Other Windows settings”, which we can only assume means desktop items such as window accents, taskbar position, and so on.