How to clear a virus, and other computing matters

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The mailbag is pretty full as we roll into the holiday season. Let's get to the most interesting questions of the bunch.Q. I have a T-series eMachine that won't turn on. I turned it off one night and the next morning, nothing. I hired a technician who charged me $200 to replace the power supply, and that turned out not to be it. I did some research and found this is a common issue with eMachines. I called the company and they would not do anything to help me. Is there anything else you recommend?A. One, get your money back from the technician who overcharged you. Second, you're right about the tales of woe about eMachines and some issues with motherboards. You can expect that, at the price point at which the desktops were sold; the machines were extraordinarily cheap. For that the consumer often pays the price later in terms of reliability.Another issue is if you do end up with a bad motherboard, you have a hard time reinstalling Windows on your new one without buying another copy of Windows XP for $129. That's because eMachines and Microsoft license the copy of Windows to your machine as shipped, and your recovery disk won't install on your new motherboard unless you are amazingly lucky and find the exact same model. (And then you have to wonder if you want to buy the same model that just tanked on you.)Bottom line: By the time you buy a motherboard and power supply (which likely caused your motherboard to go in the first place) and add in labor, you're dangerously close to the cost of a new current desktop PC with a faster processor, a much larger hard drive and more memory. So I would declare the eMachine a lost cause and move on.Q. My laptop got a virus or something that causes it not to turn on correctly and also causes the CD drive not to work. The guy I hired to fix it says the best way to repair it is to start over and wipe the entire hard drive empty. Have you heard of this?A. It's rare, but yes, there are a couple of situations where I also pull out what I call the "Nixon Vietnam solution" (In order to save it, we have to destroy it.) I can't second-guess the guy's diagnosis from here. But I also recently ran into a similar case, and the only solution I could find was: Give in and do a total reformat. Most times, getting your data off is the best you can hope for. I would invest in a new hard drive and keep your old one in an external enclosure. That way, you will never accidentally remember a piece of data (like your Internet favorites) a week later after you've reformatted.Q. My laptop is so hot that I can't even have it on my lap. Is that normal?A. For some of them, yes. The question is, is it hotter than it once was? Invest in a can of compressed air at a computer store and spray out your fans. If you have a pet, it may be worth having a nerd take your laptop apart and clean the fans, too, to ensure you are getting good airflow.(James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm and a tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim(at)cyberdads.com.)