I expected to install a virus remover, but discovered that almost every program I attempted to run resulted in an error message like: This program infected & cannot be run.
Since the message even occurred for programs on a flash drive & a CD I brought, it seems like the virus is infecting XP itself & preventing the running of any program.
Before doing a reformat & reinstall, I want to save her data files.
I intend to return & run Ubuntu directly from a CD & use it to save her data to an external hard disk.
It occurred to me that perhaps there is some virus removal program which can be run directly from the Internet & I can use Ubuntu to run it.
Her hard disk seems almost full, so I cannot install Ubuntu & suspect that the virus would interfere with Ubuntu anyway.
The Ubuntu CD was given to me several months ago & I have never used it, but experimented last night on my own system. It looks easy to run.
Running a virus remover directly from the Internet without an install process seems like the only way to go.
Can anyone give advice relating to the above?