need pc help!!

[¤~Lady Dancer Boo~¤]

I'm having a problem here. I was told that I have viruses that are not being picked up by my ani virus stuff. Well I called Gateway and that is what they told me. So the dude said I can't wipe my system clean that I need to purchase their gateway answers and they can help me. ( $199 for a year. ) or take it to best buy and pay for them to clean it. or buy new harddrive. Does this sound right to you all?
If not and I do need to wipe my system and start over how do I do that? They won't tell me? I have my system restore cd's yet.

Thanks

[andre]

I am not sure if your Windows CD's will allow you to do a clean install. Put them in and see if you get an option to reformat the harddrive and install Windows.

Of course you could always get an up-to-date version of Norton AntiVirus or some comparable product (which is usually $30-$50). Then you wouldn't lose your data.

P.S. >> Windows Operating System <b>is</b> a virus.

[Messiah Knight]

No,they won't tell you,cause they want you to bring it to them at 115 bucks an hour.

http://www.free-av.com/

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/289/lng/us/tpl/tpl01

get em,run them.If these don't fix,then plan B.

To do a clean install you have to have to totally reformat and reinstall.The restore CD will take your puter back to the way it was when you bought it,it wipes everything else off,normally.Then you start redoing from scratch from Windows up.

[kneegrow_native]

Yeah, you can use your recovery disks that come with Gateway to wipe her clean and start brand new all over again.

You might want to back up your important data first of course. A good idea would be to virus scan your backup to make sure that you didn't back up a virus. Trend Micro has a good free online virus scan.

Sounds like some computer techs are getting just as bad as crooked car mechanics. Trying to sell people new parts when the old ones work just fine when fixed properly.

When you reload your software and anti-virus software just make sure to keep your virus definitions up to date. Having out of date definitions is as bad as having no protection at all.

Norton Antivirus definitions are finally started to catch all the adware, spyware, malware file types. In the past it would look past some Trojan files.

When you reload another thing to try is to have both Spybot and Adaware, together they can keep stuff clean and they catch things that the other doesn't. They are both freewares available on download.com.

For the advanced user, there is HiJack This. It is a free ware also but you gotta know what it is that you are blowing away, or you might accidentally kill a system file, or a program file that you might need. We haved used this one to clean a few computers that seemed terminally infected and in serious need of a wipe job.