Analyzing Malware Binary

[infolookup at gmail.com (infolookup at gmail.com)]

Hello All

I recently came across several infected machine on one of a network I support. This got me thinking instead of always 
cleaning the machine and moving on I would like to start understanding the various downloaded binary that aided in the 
infection.

Can someone recommend a good source or briefly explain how you would start such an analysis.

So far I tried PEid but it was unable to identify the packer used, next I used strings and piped the output to a text 
file, I can post the out if anyone is interested.

Thank You.
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