Viruses and Spyware problems

[gtoman]

A friends PC slowed to a crawl so he called a PC repair company to come out and fix his PC. He said he wasn't running an antivirus and spyware program and the tech found loads of viruses and spyware on this hdrive. If these things are already implanted onto the hard drive will installing antivirus and spyware software at that time, if it could even be installed, remove and fix the problems or is it too late and he would have to fdisk and reinstall XP Home?

[Backdated]

It really depends on the level of infection and what the infections actually are. Unless you have a genuine interest in solving the problems that you'll come across, there comes a point when you have to balance the time spent in attempting to revive a system against the time saved on a fresh installation.

If you or your friend would like a stab at cleaning up this system, I'm sure you'll get all the help you need here.
Conversely, if you decide to bite the bullet and start again from scratch, I'm sure that help and advice for that will be available too.