Maximum PC

A friend of a friend has a virus on their laptop. I've removed most of it but a lot of adware remains - such as whitesmoke translator

Malwarebytes has removed everything labelled as "virus" but you can tell there are still issued by Tool bars reappearing on Explorer after they've been disabled.

I've always been a big proponent of wiping and reinstalling the OS after something like this just for complete piece of mind - but her laptop has a windowsxp Media Centre tag on it.

Sorry I don't know what this is and/or if I can install regular WinXP over it?

What is the make and model of the laptop? Did the laptop come with restore disks or is there a hidden partition on the hard drive that would allow you to perform a factory restore?

It's an acer but no discs due to its age

What's an easy way to look for a hidden partition?

Maybe I should just restore from an earlier date?

Try looking for an Acer e-Recovery Management application in the Acer folder. If it's there, you should be able to restore the laptop back to factory condition.

Another thing you can try is to open the My Computer window, then right-click on the hard drive, and left-click on Properties in the right-click drop-down menu. Left-click on the Hardware tab in the Properties window, and highlight the hard drive in the tab. Left-click on the Properties button in the lower right-hand part of the tab. This will open a new window that shows the properties of the actual hard drive in your computer. Left-click on the Volumes tab near the top of this window, then left-click on the Populate button in the lower right section of the tab. If it shows a partition with no drive letter assigned to it, that is the hidden partition on the laptop.