[Bubba]

I've been trying to help a lady with some XP problems who restored/reinstalled to get rid of some viruses, in her own words:

My computer had some really nasty viruses on it. So I wouldn't have to deal with removing these viruses manually I decided to restore my computer threw the F11 process during the start up. Half way through the restore I recieved and error and was told to restart. From there I kept getting into a loop with the error always ending in Loading PBR for description 2... done A disk read error occured Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.

It was suggested to me at this point since I could not get out of this loop to reinstall my OS. I reinstalled using disk "Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Update Rollup 2".

Ok, so she re-installed her OS but did not reformat and as such still has the partition with the restore stuff. (She's has a Dell). My question is this: Since she didn't reformat before she reinstalled, are the viruses still there or did the reinstall roll right over them and the previous version of her OS. Also, is it possible for a virus to get to her partition where her restore option files are?

I don't want to help her with her driver and performance problems and get her stupid Dell splash screen back (she wants it lol) only to find that she is still infected and I SHOULD have told her to run it past some malware experts. Thanks.

[evilfantasy]

Point her to the Malware Removal Guide.

She doesn't necessarily have to post the logs but it can't hurt to do the steps. What she actually did and what she says or thinks she did might be two different things.

[Bubba]

Thanks.