Virus's: Sasser, W32 Spybot.worm, W32.bargo in WinXp

This is'nt happening on my computer but a friends in another country, but her computer has all those virus's plus 2 more, I was trying to help her fix this and her friend is fairly tech savvy, they tried formatting the drive but its had no effect, I got them to run Ad aware and spybot search & destroy. I think they have Nortons but its probably not up to date or a hacked copy. Anyway what else can be done to REMOVE those bloody virus's! If formatting does'nt work whats left, get a new drive? She also uses I.E. and I tried getting her to switch to Netscape as I thought she was getting alot of this thru explorer. She does'nt randomly download files or click on exe's from the net either so Im not sure how she got so many problems there.

Any help/advice is appreciated, thanks

 

A format and reinstall of XP should certainly have removed any of these critters from the system.

However, the usual time on the internet for Sasser and several others to infect an XP system that is not fullly patched or running AV with current ref files is often under 2 minutes.

 

Ok thanks very much for the reply, I'll get back to my friend and find out whats happening for sure!