A Friend's Computer That I Can't Fix...

I feel like such an idiot, coming here for help…

Ok. The only reason I'm asking is because the person is a great guy, my math teacher, and hes helped me out a bunch. And he's expecting me to know this stuff.

His computer has a virus, and it wont let him open it at all, not in safe mode or anything like that. Its fairly new, and he spent quite a lot of money on it.

I cannot figure out what to do with it. I've Googled this, but I can't find anything. He uses Windows XP with IE, if it helps. I am just completely lost on this.

Any help at all would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thanks, guys. :)

Hmm. Maybe post error(s)?

unseen wrote: Hmm. Maybe post error(s)?

At the risk of sounding stupid, what do you mean errors? Like, what comes up when he tries to start it?

(It might be because I'm tired that I didn't quite understand that. Sorry)

yeah. what it says when the computer is started

Post the errors you see. Maybe you could pull out the harddrive, put it in a 3,5 inch casing and connect it to a STANDALONE (NO INET) computer to scan it for viruses.

If you get rid of the virsuses, back the stuff up on the STANDALONE pc, reïnstall windows (format hdd) and, tadaa, copy his stuff back on it.

Just scan, rescan and doublescan with multiple virus scanners!

(use a standalone pc!)

An alternative idea: use a boot disk, DOS or whatever, to back up, put backups in a standalone pc with a read only virus scanner, use that, and use a boot disk to format, then reinstall.

Sorry if that wasn't entirely clear, I'm really tired at the moment :P