Not sure what your really discribing to us is a legit windows pop up or malware.
1. Update your virus scan and run a complete scan to rid computer of virus's.
1a. If you do not have one download AVG free edition at the following. Then install, update, and scan whole computer.
http://free.avg.com/download?prd=afe
2.Start up Spybot search and destory, then update it. Then immunize your system. Then scan your computer. If you do not have it then do not worry about it. This program scans for malware,spyware,some virus's, and protects your computer for going to specific URL's. This guide would be too long for me to describe how to install this program. I recommend only using the internet protection part of this program, I have some issues with the system protection part. These settings can only be made during a custom install of the program. If you choose to install this program your on your own on how you want to install it.
http://www.spybot.com/index2.html
3. If your problem is the annoying Windows Security Center telling you the following: A: your virus scan is out of date,you do not have one or is not working correctly. B: Telling you to change your automatic update settings. C: your Firewall protection is off or not working. D: something else I don't know of in the errors.
3a. If you want to rid yourself of those notices. I highly recommend not to change these settings if you know nothing about computers. These warnings are there for a reason to alert the average user there is a problem. The following steps will allow you to keep Windows Security Center for the most part silent.
I. Go to your Control Panel.
II. If your using the Category View then click Security Center. -Move to step IV.
III. If your using Classic View, double click on Security Center. -Move to step IV.
IV. Once the Security Center window is brought up, you will see a blue bordered box on the left side of the window. This blue box is titled "Resources". If you see bullets then move to step V. If you do not see bullets then you need to click the double arrows pointing downwards to expand the box. Now move to Step V.
V. Click the bottom bullet labeled. "Change the way Security Center alerts me"
VI. Now UNCHECK, all the features you DO NOT want to be alerted about. The click OK, then close out all the other windows that you opened up. Your finished.
Side note: you can use these same instructions to go back and turn the alerts back on if you need to.
Okay now to the discussion of reinstalling windows. FIRST- BACK UP all material you do not want lost.
There many different ways to approach installing windows. By all means a regular user will have to step up to the plate and actually need to learn some advanced computer know how. Most users just pop in a CD of windows and run the auto recovery or reinstall over current partitions. From personal experience I never needed to do a auto recovery. Then again I am not a regular user.
What I recommend is something called a Zero wipe(AKA a low level format) first. What a zero wipe does is write zeros to every sector of your HD basically killing any malware and virus or corrupted windows data on the HD that cannot be erased by a deletion of a partition. Now using such a program by a regular user is not recommended unless you do research on a zero wipe program and learn the in's and out's of the process. Once the zero wipe is done you can normally reinstall windows the normal way. Have your driver disks ready or predownload the newest drivers from the makers of your hardware and burn the drivers to a CD or copy them to a Flashdrive.
If you do not feel comfortable doing a zero wipe then just pop in the windows CD, delete all current partitions, recreate the sizes, then install on the partition you want.
