Wipe drive to clean computer

Letters are clogging a couple of "in" boxes today. Let's get to the best of them and see if we can clear up some nagging questions.

Q. I have a spyware infection that two technicians have failed to resolve. Both have told me it is cleared up, and it has returned after a short time. The last technician said he cleared it up but I must have gotten reinfected.

However, there is no way that happened. Can you make any suggestions how to get a computer completely clean?

A. May I suggest holy water and a priest? Seriously, I have not met a computer I could not clean, but sometimes it is more cost-effective to remove the customer's data and wipe the computer's hard drive to the base level and reinstall the operating system and programs. This is pretty easy if you have the reinstallation CDs that came with the computer.

Even if you don't have them, you can reinstall Windows if you have at least that CD (or you can order a set from the computer manufacturer.) It does sound drastic to reformat the computer, but unless you have a bunch of special programs, you can be back in business in a couple of hours if you have your CDs.

But read this twice: You will lose EVERYTHING on your hard drive, including your e-mail, favorites, files and data. Move everything first. Better yet, buy a new hard drive and reinstall on the new, larger drive and keep the second drive as your secondary drive in a USB enclosure.

Q. In your review of the Macbook Air, you mentioned there was not a CD drive. However there is an external drive available for $99.

A. Yes, an external drive is available (actually any external drive that uses a USB port will work, but Apple sells one that matches the Air.) I actually don't think the lack of the drive is a huge limitation. I think the lack of replaceable battery, FireWire, Ethernet and 80 GB hard drive are bigger problems. I am going to wait for the next version and keep my PowerBook for a while.

Q. Every time I launch Microsoft Office 2007 (any component) in Windows Vista, then do something and then close it, I get an error, then Office reopens. It happens in Word, Excel, anything. It drives me insane. Do you know of a fix?

A. No. I have read of others with the same issue and have one laptop with the same thing going on for a while. Service Pack 1 fixed it for about a week, but it came back, at least in my experience. Microsoft calls it a "known issue" with certain combinations and promises it is under investigation. It also causes Windows Media Player to quit in certain laptops and desktops. I will let you know if I find a fix.

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James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail is jim@cyberdads.com.