Repair Install does nothing??

The eraser tool will literally take care of "everything" on the drive as well as using the DiskPart command "clean all" while booted live from a 7 dvd. But that would be taking things a bit too far especially if you lack any recovery disk. The quick way however requires a live disk just the same to see the C primary not the recovery partition removed for a new one to be created and formatted for use.

On previous builds when simply repairing things rather then a clean install on a new primary things never did go so well. Once you have a fresh primary and good clean install on you will want to create a good image of the drive for safe keeping unless you discover the drive is having problems of it's own.

All fixed...

1. using command prompt in my 7 disc, i issued the format command. it took several hours, but once that was done. i did a clean install of 7 pro. no problems carried over. :)

2. put norton is back. will never trust ms security essntials since it was its failure to stop malware which originally messed up this laptop (removing the malware messed up the following in the os: command prompt, ctrl+alt+delete, corruption is user account which affects taskbar, inability to install either adobe cs2 or 7 sp1 beta)

3. adobe cs2 installed normally now

fyi: norton isn't bloated anymore and is an effective av software. norton of several (3+) years ago was bloated. norton has saved my butt on many ocassions. i have tried many types of av.

People unfortunately as you have learned place a little bit roo much confidence in "any" one program including Norton as a rule. That again is another mistake! Multiple layers will always be far more effective then pointing to one program by itself.

As far as the MS SE that only reported one trojan placed on the drive after it was already on for awhile when the former av's IE security toolbar was temporary disabled while running .... Guess what? a search on Bing! The new av program on now replaces the need for any IE secuirity bar and will actually block out any sites detected with any malous type coding before you even see it!

Again that's one program far more updated then most others also including it's own firewall. The funny thing is that you generally will forget it's even installed since it barely leaves a light foot print on resources. Is it ever 1000% fool proof? Nothing is since it clashed when going to download the WLive Essentials beta's web installer for some reason! Firewall against Live Safety scanner or something like that.

As far reformatting any drive seeing that take hours? Why? you can simply nuke any primary and create a new one to replace it in only a few minutes including the format of the file system to be used. But at lest you have that one solved.

Like most av programs it failed to prevent the trojan from being placed on the system in the first place. The additional layer of protection is seen when you something referred to as IE protection which filters bad sites upon detection of malicious coding such as phising sites as one example.

On the main system here the VIPRE Premium includes a very effective firewall as well as av, adware, spyware, and rootkit protections. It's not free however with the 2yr. license. It certainly has done far more then any other av program tried out over the years being far more updated.

The good thing however is hearing the news there! Merkat106 Often it takes a full clean install if you are unable to clean off any nasty infection.