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“well intentioned” ?? He’s right.
How much data does that drive have ? Scanning it all, step by step, trying to preserve and keeep the OS working and keeping it intact… restarting a scan, find something, restart a scan again… I have done IT work for 30 years. Spending 4-5-7 hours cleaning a virus off the computer is a complete waste of time. If the computer has a LOT of data on it, it could take 4 hours to do a single pass scan. You can do a full reinstall of the OS in 2 hours and fully patched with software reloaded in another 45 minutes. less than 3 hours fully done. In fact we have automated the entire process and can do a full install with all additional software in less than 2 hours now.
Guaranteed to be clean, piece of mind that you KNOW nothing is left behind.
Pull the drive, attach it to another computer. Copy all of the data off… OR get a new drive and install from scratch. While the OS is installing on the new drive, you can be scanning the data files on another machine. Use the old drive as an external storage, get a $20 usb case for it.
And do yourself a FAVOR. Partition the new drive to at least 3 partitions, separate your data from the OS and install Windows Steady State (XP) or Faronics Deep Freeze. Never worry about anti virus again.
If you need more detail let me know, we can send you a copy of our procedures. We have done this to over 600 computers. Ran an internet Cafe with 15,000 through the front door in 5 months and never has a single infection of virus, spyware, maleware, etc.