Mega F'ed Up Infected PC Recomendations?

My buddy's laptop.(X2 actually).  I have no idea what's on it, but whatever it is, it's good. 

I've done everything I can think of.  It won't format from a good XP disc.  Stops at about 57%.  When it runs the Windows that's on it, it prevents you from accessing the add/remove programs from the control panel, and turns off the Windows firewall, and anything else you throw on it.

Norton finds nothing.  Spysweeper finds nothing, but on a reboot, it turns both protections off.

I'm tapped.  It's FUBARed.

Any Ideas before I take them into work tomorrow and put them into the MRI to wipe everything to the tune of 1.5 Tesla?

TIA

$80 new hard drive, with kaspersky ($80 more, 3 license / 1 year)  for good measure.

Another quick question.  On laptop 2, which I only spent a little time on....when I put the boot disk in it said unable to find a connected hard drive.  What's that about?

Shut down and reboot, Winblows XP comes up, infected as evar.  Just fuxxor3d?

LOL  It stuck pretty good.


I think it was a bad idea however.  Now the pc won't boot from the cd at all.

Ooops.   

The Aske solution is looking like the ticket.   

*awaits torpedo avast-bot post*
   (avast is a fine product too, I just don't like it as much )


*other options include running (repeated) hijack this* scan(s) and posting it in their forums and trying to really fix the current problems, but it sounds f'd up beyond that time/effort*


whatever you do with AV/Firewall stuff (kaspersky or other.. but not mccrapafee or *feces*mantic), set them on ultrahigh security modes, set them on self-protect (no uninstall / settings change without password) , and set a password this guy won't know.   

Oh, I thought of that too. (and uh........you know) I think that's why they won't boot from the cd, and now the cd tray won't stay shut on one.   

LOL, if the BIOS is hosed  (no offense to Stroh)  do we think he can fix it ?

Uh-oh Aske, you're sounding like the GeekSquad guys, always wanting to take the easy way out. ( <--- directed at GeekSquad)

[GeekSquad rant]
Earlier this year I fixed a PC for a friend of ours that was so virus and malware infested that when he had GeekSquad and 2 other separate techs he knows look at it none of them would even touch it long enough to format it, let alone fix it, (rebooting took 25+ minutes after the desktop was loaded) and all 3 said to just throw it away. (It wasn't that old of a laptop, with a RAM upgrade it would be plenty nice.) But they were too lazy to get paid to actually have to *work* on a PC for a change and not just format it and re-install Windows. These guys are supposed to be techs, they get paid major bucks, anyway ... long story short going by GeekSquad's rates I did over $1,500 worth of work on it (completely fixed it - without formatting) for free.
[/GeekSquad rant]


Kaspersky is a fine product too (excluding their explorer.exe incident - you knew it was coming ), I just don't like it as much. But at least we both agree: Avast/Kaspersky >>>>> Norton/Mcaffe.


I read my own HJT logs.