I can't say much about AVs since I personally don't trust them anyway and haven't used one for years now (I generally only use the comp for Facebook (no apps or clicking on any link other than YouTube/scholarly sites), email, chatting, and research nowadays - on a Linux OS).
In terms of formatting, you should be able to easily understand if I explain the idea of partitioning to you.
If you were to buy a brand new hard disk...you can think of it as an empty house - no bathrooms, no stairs, no closet...only the outer walls - that limit how big it is and how much stuff (data) you can put in it. Since people in real life generally want walls and their own rooms to organize things and keep things separate...we, well, build walls and rooms. lol Each room you make can be thought of as a partition, which is a segment/portion of the entire house (hard disk) itself.
Now, you and your mother might have very different tastes in how you would organize things/put things around the rooms (partitions), so you each have a unique way to yourself. This is analogous to data formatting. Data is written to each partition on the hard drive in certain ways (formats).
On Windows, you may specify a
format of a drive (partition...denoted by drive letter: (e.g. C
) by going to
My Computer, right clicking on the drive, and selecting
format.
File System is best left as
NTFS,
allocation unit size default,
volume label is the "name" you want to give to that drive, for easier identification. Usually, a
quick format would suffice - and would destroy all the data on the drive (not really, but you may think of it this way for starters). You may do this for all drives where Windows is not installed on - because Windows would not allow you to erase itself while it's running.
For the partition that Windows is installed on (C: usually), you may wipe that using a Windows installation disk or any other disk utility - launched by restarting your computer, before Windows boots up (might require you to press some key or configuring something called BIOS to allow booting from CD/DVD). The Windows setup (from a Windows 7 DVD, for example) disk utility is quite easy to use if you understand my explanation of partitions and formats above. Note that if you wipe the partition where Windows is installed on, you would need to reinstall Windows. This might seem to be a large turn-off, but this is actually the main point of doing a reformat. Usually, viruses, trojans, etc. attach to system processes (stuff native to Windows itself...I'm not talking about your music, etc.), so the most effective way to get rid of them would be to wipe the location in which they reside.
Since this would mean that you would need to reinstall Windows and everything else...antivirus programs exist for that reason to try to wipe out the infections without the need for you to wipe everything else. But you can't ever guarantee that the antivirus does a complete and thorough job at cleaning...so that's why I recommend a format if you're REALLY concerned about this.
Be warned though, since a formatting/partitioning through the Windows setup utility would destroy your data on those partitions that are deleted/formatted, you would need to copy your
personal files (meaning...documents, music, movies, etc.) on those partitions elsewhere prior to doing a format.
Installed programs are usually located in
C:\Program Files, and usually, those are better re-installed altogether after reinstallation of Windows (so don't copy those) due to other complications.
It's quite a hassle if you've never done it before...and you might not need to if you are able to eventually isolate the cause of your hacking as being independent of your computer. But this would be the safest thing to do.
