My Mom got a nasty virus on her PC that I've been trying to clean out of her system for the past few days. Her computer is a 3-year-old HP PC running Windows 7. I ran the normal Norton scan (she pays for the service but never downloaded it on to her machine) and it cleaned up a few things and it says the system is clean on subsequent scans. But the computer is still running super slow so something is obviously still wrong. I decided to run NPE and it found a list of things that it flagged as "Bad." I clicked the "Fix" button and it's now been running for over 12 hours and it's still going. There is a "Removing Risk" window showing with a spinning icon and some info on which files it's dealing with. At first I thought it must be hung up and spinning it's wheels, but I can see over time that different files have been showing in the "Removing Risk" window.
Anyway, is it normal for NPE to take this long? Once it's done is the computer going to be functional? I keep reading that NPE can wipe out your system and should only be used as an absolute last resort. Since the regular Norton scan was not picking up on the problem I figured this an appropriate use of NPE, but now I'm worried about the effects.
Any help or advice is appreciated.
Thanks.