question about anti virus

[Liquid_Scope_99]

Well guys, as many of you know i am working part time at pizza hut .
One of the girls there wants me to work on her PC has a virus i am going to reformat it she wants me to ave her pictures to a cd i am going to do that only thing is how can i make absolutely sure there are no viruses ,or malware that will get back on her system . can i burn them all to cd and then run a virus scan on them if it coems back good am i good . Or do i need to do more detail.
Thanks in advance and rep to all that chime in .
Also she wants me to get her a virus scanner she is paying for it
the guy she talked to wanted $150 to do im doing it for a small amount she is pretty nice and has helped me out at work .
The virus scanners she mentioned is

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832284035
Mcafee is not my favorite but hey what ever she wants

Also i found
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832286026
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832620016

which one do you guys recommend out of the three i will check back in after work if nothing happens thanks again

[Luke122]

I am not a real fan of any of those products. I find McAffee very intrusive, AVG does not offer sufficient protection, and Trend Micro (while being the best of the three IMO) is still not as good as Norton Antivirus or Webroot AV/Spysweeper.

My opinion on the backup/format:

Make sure your virus protection is up to date and working, then slave her HDD into your computer, and copy out her pictures. If a virus is found during the copy, your AV will disinfect/quarantine/delete the offending file before it is copied to your machine. Viruses attached to photos are fairly rare anyways.

Once they are all backed up, run a scan on your machine to be 100% certain.

Then format her drive, reinstall everything including all the windows updates and service packs, then the AV, and then restore her data.

If you are CERTAIN a format is necessary (it's not always so), that's how I would (and do) go about it.

I would start (after backing up files) by booting her computer into safemode, disabling system restore (viruses can hide in there), and running Combofix, SmitFraudFix, MBAM, Spybot, and finally Windows Live One Care Safety Scanner (all can be downloaded, installed, run, and uninstalled in Safemode). At this point, the machine should be clean. If not, format.

If it's clean, install the AV, run all your updates, then restore data.
Tada! A good solid evening of babysitting a computer.

[Liquid_Scope_99]

Hey thanks alot i have another one to look at im hoping i can get a good flow of business for m there if they like my work .Word of mouth can be pretty powerful .Thanks again and +rep

[Luke122]

No prob.. I do tons of virus cleanups, and have it down to a pretty solid science. :D

[x88x]

Luke hit the nail on the head for the process. As for the AV software, I would recommend either ESET NOD32 or Kaspersky. Unfortunately, both quite a bit more expensive than those you listed, but you get what you pay for. If a free product is preferable, I would recommend Avira's free Antivir scanner. From my experience it's the best free one available.

ESET NOD32: $40/year (http://www.eset.com/products/index.php)
Kaspersky: $60/year (http://usa.kaspersky.com/products_services/HomeProducts.php)
Avira (http://www.free-av.com/)
Getting rid of the Avira nag screen (http://www.elitekiller.com/files/disable_antivir_nag.htm)

If you want to be really sure that her files are clean, you can always upload them to VirusTotal (https://www.virustotal.com/). Though, you can only do individual files and it takes a while for it to get through all the scan engines, so I would only do that if there are some that you're suspicious of but your AV isn't picking up.

[Dysturbed]

total agreement on avira. It's free and it's good nuff said.
i also use malwarebytes and adaware on my laptop for spyware.

[Liquid_Scope_99]

thanks guys rep coming too all we have run into a snag ,snafu ,why me lol.
She was off today her and her mother-in-law brought the pc .
I didn't know who the pc belonged too because the Mother-in-law kept butting in anyway .
I knew she didn't have her win xp disc no problem i have a win xp service pack three legal for just such an occasion i asked where the key was she did not know what i mean .
I found it it is a non legit copy of windows i told her she would need to buy an os or i could get it for her i told her 7 was $100 .
I know i could get it by other means i just dont wanna open that can of worms and people calling ms on me lol .
Any body have a legal xp on the cheap, i mean cheap lol thanks in advance.
She is gonna talk to me about it at work tomorrow probably lose the business.
I just want to stay legit . any opinions or ideas

[x88x]

Does it not have a license sticker on it? ...it occurs to me that for some reason I was thinking that this was a laptop...and looking over the posts, I'm not sure why..

[Liquid_Scope_99]

lol no it does not that's the same thing i checked and asked but , i found out it does not have a legit windows on it . im looking into getting one but she wanted it done Sunday lol it did not get home tonight until midnight and it has a strange dust creature in it .:facepalm:

On a side not i feel bad sometimes liek with this girl nice girl her and her hubby tight with money so i said i would do it way under what i usually charge because i feel like im taking advantage of someone i na bind then this stuff happens and i remember why i charge what i do

[x88x]

She's not a student by any chance, is she? If so, she could get a license for $65 here:
http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx

Unfortunately, if not, there's not much you can do besides getting her an OEM license...or installing Linux. :whistler:

[Liquid_Scope_99]

I do have a student edition from long ago is that still cool to use ?:whistler:

[Luke122]

Hmm... probably bending the rules a bit, I cant comment on that. Airbozo might know for sure. :D

[x88x]

Legally (ie, according to a scrict reading of the EULA), no, it's not allowed. But then, neither is moving an OEM license to a different MBB. Morally, idk, that's for you to figure out. :P Will they come after you for doing it? Unlikely.