Would a complete cleaning of a computer get rid of a computer virus?

Question

i think i have a virus on my computer, and/or a spam-bot, so i was wondering if a complete cleaning of my computer (like using those cd's that clean out and erase all from your computer) would get rid of it for sure... i don't want to take it anywhere to remove the virus, and i already used antivirus stuff, but i want to make sure, so i want to erase everything

before i do, WOULD this remove the virus for sure??

Answer 1

You mean a restore disc or something?  One of the discs that came with your computer?  Sure.  That would clean out the virus, since it would reinstall the operating system.

When you reinstall the operating system, you format the disk.  Unless the virus you've got has gotten itself into the boot sector, which is unlikely, but not impossible, reinstalling the OS should bring things back to the way they were when you first bought the machine.  Even so, depending on the OS, the boot sector will probably get reformatted anyway.

Answer 2

if you format your HDD than the virus should be gone I have done it lot's of times an so far it works most times, there can be times when the virus can be very poisoning and that case you may use killdisk which is free. but make sure you  backup all data you like to keep, hope it helps,

if you need some more help, you can contact me at david.pc at live.ca I'm a certified IT with 7 years of Experience.  

Answer 3

Erasing your hard disk would definitely get rid of a virus.  A virus is just like any other application on your computer, except in ninja form.  Still, wiping a hard drive will take out anything on your machine.  

If you want to be absolutely sure and go way overkill, there should be an option to "zero" the drive - but unless the virus is something aliens made, this method would spend a lot more time (think of it as copying a file as large as your harddrive - that would take a long time, proportional to how large the disk is) to have the same effect.  I recommend backing up all your essentials (do NOT do a system clone, because you'll clone the virus too) and wipe the drive if you can't get rid of it via anti viral/spyware.  

First, make sure all your virus definitions are up to date and run your virus scanner again.  Run any disk utilities you have as well to check permissions and all that as well.  If that doesn't fix it, wipe it.