My partners son recently inadvertenly clicked on a link in MSN hwich turned out to be a virus.  Not sure how it got through, as this was an old work LAPTOP that was supposed to have the best protection MONEY can buy etc etc, but needless to say it caused a few problems.  They were mainly annoying rather than dangerous (or at least appeared to be), constant pop ups was the main one, until IE completely vanished.  I've doen a virus check, deleted everything I can, but have decided the best step is to wipe the drive and start again.  One of the problems I have is that becuase the laptop belonged to my former employers, I don't have any of the master disks.  Another problem is that I'm a novice (in case you can't tell yet  :-/), so any advice anyone can give will be greatly appreciated.

CheersPlease give more information about what virus scanners you used and what you deleted and what operating system is used on the laptop.

If you don't mind spending money, you can buy a new Windows disk (aka "master disk") and start afresh. Finding drivers might be a bit more problematic.Norton Anti Virus, Windows XP PRO.  I basically deleted every file that either wasn't needed or used regularly, all temp files (which I try and do regularly anyway) and a couple of strange looking .exe files that appeared on the desktop.  Sorry, can't remember what they were called, I just wanted rid of them!  The basics are still on, Office etc, and IE vanished after a couple of days.  The laptop appears to be working without any problems now IE isn't there, I just don't want to start using it for the web without cleaning the whole thing up first.

To be honest, I'm expecting to have to fork out in the end anyway!Everyone needs a real Windows CD sooner or later. In your case it appears to be sooner.I got a virus on my computer recently. If it was not too long ago, you could POSSIBLY use the system restore feature, which (at least for me) returned my computer to a state when IE still existed. That can be found by opening up the Start Menu, clicking "Run", typing "MSCONFIG", and then clicking "Launch System Restore". I then used IE to run a virus scan from Panda Software (www.pandasoftware.com) to locate the viral files, which I deleted. My computer has been fine ever since.Thanks, I'll give it a go.