How should I eliminate virus from safe mode?

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Recently, a friend of mine has her laptop infected with virus. She accidentally clicked "ok" on a pop - up message without reading it carefully. Now a phony virus detecting program keep on running on the screen every time she turns on the laptop. She ask me for help, and the only method I knew was to format the hard drive, to erase everything in there, and re - install the Windows operating system? What other efficient method I should use to help her out? I knew most pros would rather go into safe mode, load up all the basic drivers, and to search for the virus root from scratch. So, if I got into safe mode, how should I detect the location of this virus, and eliminate it from there? Any one can teach me how?