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<blockquote data-quote="shellyj2010" data-source="post: 75118" data-attributes="member: 2120"><p>Hi Jack- well things went swimmingly for some time- then this past Friday- I tried to open an Excel spreadsheet that I had been working in for two weeks and the Windows Installer came up saying preparing configuration and then could not install. I tried to run an Avast scan and it said I was not linked to an Avast account- and wouldn&#039;t let me run Malwarebytes- saying Runtime Error. I rebooted in Safe Mode and backed up every file that is important to me to Google Drive- to be safe. I have been running Avast 7, We have done Malewarebytes scans each week, we have been religiously using Sandboxie to surf the net, and have only been visiting sites with Green rating in WOT- so I feel this is something that was most likely already on our system and laying dormant. My main question at this point is if we just reformat our hard drive and do a brand new installation for our OS (upgrading to Windows 7 instead of Vista) and start from scratch- will this get rid of any lurking viruses? Or is there a program we should purchase to completely clean the hard drive before installing a new OS? Thank you so much again for all your help!</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="shellyj2010, post: 75118, member: 2120"] Hi Jack- well things went swimmingly for some time- then this past Friday- I tried to open an Excel spreadsheet that I had been working in for two weeks and the Windows Installer came up saying preparing configuration and then could not install. I tried to run an Avast scan and it said I was not linked to an Avast account- and wouldn't let me run Malwarebytes- saying Runtime Error. I rebooted in Safe Mode and backed up every file that is important to me to Google Drive- to be safe. I have been running Avast 7, We have done Malewarebytes scans each week, we have been religiously using Sandboxie to surf the net, and have only been visiting sites with Green rating in WOT- so I feel this is something that was most likely already on our system and laying dormant. My main question at this point is if we just reformat our hard drive and do a brand new installation for our OS (upgrading to Windows 7 instead of Vista) and start from scratch- will this get rid of any lurking viruses? Or is there a program we should purchase to completely clean the hard drive before installing a new OS? Thank you so much again for all your help! [/QUOTE]

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