Will this remove all malware?

**Bubba** · #1 29th Jan 2009, 14:01

I was helping an old lady get a cheap computer for Email. Had her one (p4 3.0, 2gb's ram 150 gb HDD) for $150 (US), when her son decided she would be better off with his old machine, P3, 300something MB's RAM and a 40 GB HDD. That wasn't all, he had been surfing Porn and it was ate up with malware. Rather than trouble ya'll with cleaning it, I reformatted the HDD and re installed the software. There was nothing on thwere that she wanted other than XP, which I put back on and updated, (along with Winpatrol, an AV and Spybot lol). Is there anyway anything survived the reformatting? I didn't think it was possible, but I am but an egg when it comes to computers.........

**evilfantasy** · #2 29th Jan 2009, 14:20

I would say 99.99% of the time a reformat/reinstall will kill all malwre.

**Bubba** · #3 29th Jan 2009, 15:14

Thanks Evil. I really wanted to run through the processes to learn a little more, but I just don't have time right now as the race season is starting up. Besides lol, it just wasn't worth it for this cheezy machine. Mainly because in his attempt to get rid of the "evidence" that he had visited porn sites, this dude deleted portions of the OS as well. LOL I don't know why he was worried about it, he manages a strip club and so I'm sure his mom knows he looks at naked ladies.........

**serverguy** · #4 29th Jan 2009, 16:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bubba

Thanks Evil. I really wanted to run through the processes to learn a little more, but I just don't have time right now as the race season is starting up. Besides lol, it just wasn't worth it for this cheezy machine. Mainly because in his attempt to get rid of the "evidence" that he had visited porn sites, this dude deleted portions of the OS as well. LOL I don't know why he was worried about it, he manages a strip club and so I'm sure his mom knows he looks at naked ladies.........

If a computer was changing owners I would say it would be standard policy to reformat it.

You never know what may be on it, and XP becomes fairly knackered after a few years of being messed around with.

**Bubba** · #5 29th Jan 2009, 16:37

LOL "knackered", I love the linguistic lessons I get on this site along with the computer lessons. Not exactly sure how emphatic a word knackered is, but I'll give it a go sometime and see if I get it right.

**philthomas** · #6 30th Jan 2009, 10:45

... in Cockney Ryhming slang, we also say "Cream Crackered" for knackered