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$150 for a reformat?!
I did this for my mother's laptop the other day. Took maybe two and a half hours on-and-off while watching television. If I need to reformat my desktop and reinstall all key programs, I've got the speed down to less than an hour (much faster hardware). Both cases were those cynical viruses you get these days: they prevent you from opening your antivirus program and block Firefox from opening any pages, forcing you to use Internet Explorer (presumably the exploit they are programmed with is designed to work with IE).
When someone gets one of these viruses, I always try system restore to an earlier time. It worked for me once. If this fails, I don't waste any more time, but just reinstall Windows. Many will disagree with this, but I no longer run an AV program on my own PC. I find they don't make it any more or less likely that you will get a virus: - I base this assertion on myself getting less viruses than those I know who have AVs installed. I do, of course, run a firewall.
These days, most people - advanced users no less than those who aren't very confident - unwittingly open the door to viruses themselves. We rely on getting so many files off the internet, and you can contract a virus simply by visiting a perfectly reasonable seeming website. There was a case of a UK bank's site unwittingly harbouring a virus at one point. If you've clicked 'yes' to install something, no AV software is going to save you.
The best advice is to have all your reinstallation DVDs easily to hand, so that it takes as little time as possible to get everything up and running again.
I had thought that anti-virus programs for Android phones were a silly idea. This week, I finally met someone who had got a virus on their phone. Not good news, when you think of how much personal information a 'Google phone' holds.
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