windows reinstall or remove viruses

[17mchuh17]

OK, so my friend is paying me to help him fix his laptop. He already went to geek squad (yes the over-priced evil geek squad), and they said that his hard drive is on the way out and that his PC is laden with viruses.

I was wondering if i should try to find his product key, get an ISO for his version of windows and do a fresh install of windows and just copy his docs and stuff over OR clone his hard drive and use a bunch of different AV and anti-malware programs to try and clean his system.

Any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

For a heavily virus laden PC, I personally wouldn't spend more than 15 minutes fixing it.
Wipe and reinstall.

Be very, very careful when you save his personal docs, etc to somewhere else. One or more of those is how the system got infected in the first place.

 

[17mchuh17]

One or more of those is how the system got infected in the first place.

yeah im going to move like his pictures, and word docs, which i will scan before moving