[Olivaw]

A friend possibly has some malware issue and to be safe wants to reinstall his XP. He is planning to use the original CD and doing a "repair". Would that take care of any malware hiding on his system or should he do a complete reformat?

[kiwiguy]

A repair will not eliminate malware.

[Olivaw]

thanks Kiwiguy, what would you suggest in this case - a full reformat or something else? It seems he is now well advanced in the rebuilding of the system and noted with satisfaction that some of his old folders have reappeared, did not even have to be transferred from the backup. I would worry now that if he did have some malware before (and we are not sure), it might still be hiding somewhere.
He did however do another scan with the program that previously alerted him and now it seems fine.

[skinnywhiteboy]

If possible, do the back up all important data and do the format. There could be other things on there too that the format will take care of.