Really? Ever?

Having asked that, yes, it's a bad piece of advice. Never connect a an infected drive to a clean system, whether it's been "cleaned" or not. The correct procedure is to make a boot disk for the infected system and scan from that.

 

"Some tech guy" is generally not a good person to get advice from, as non-technical people categorize anyone that knows a few buzzwords as a "tech" person.

If I were you I would format and reinstall Windows 7 - as drastic as that sounds, once a machine has been infected with a virus it's never guaranteed to be clean after that, even if an AV program tells you it is.

 

Got it. I'll let her know what to do.

Thanks.

 

READ & RUN ME FIRST Malware Removal Guide (incl. spyware, virus, trojan, hijacker) - MajorGeeks Support Forums

Best site on earth, always updated, has been for years. Totally gets rid of anything that isn't supposed to be there.

 

Norton sucks. Get AVG, it's free and light and does the job well. Microsoft security essentials is pretty good too. Also get Malwarebytes Anti malware. It is also free and can clean quite a bit.

As others have suggested I would wipe and reload and start with a clean slate. I would also start with better protections. Sounds like either still infected (possible) or the virus broke something (more likely).

 

Normally things more idiotic than that are spoken aloud not written down

 

I am having these similar problems on my Toshiba laptop, just trying a system restore

 

i've been a windows/pc junkie for years and decided to switch to ubuntu/linux last year. i've never been happier. very user friendly, no viruses, no malware, no spyware, no ridiculously time consuming updates, and no unwanted programs/tasks running in the background to slow your computer down. i would suggest to back up all personal data and wipe your drive. then reinstall windows for work use and install ubuntu for personal/leisure use. my lenovo is set up for dual boot so i can choose which operating system boots during start up. it also comes with 'ubuntu one' which is just like 'icloud' and a linux app store with tons of free programs ranging from games to engineering. i was in the market for a new laptop a year ago, but since i've switched to linux, im pretty sure i can get a couple more years out of this beast. if you're interested in doing this, let me know and i can point you in the right direction. i'm not an overly tech savy guy and was able to pull this off with minimal effort. oh and you get 4 desktops!!!

 

That actually sounds perfect. All she uses it for is email and other crap like that so that sounds pretty cool.

PM me with details