or if you have the knowledge (pretty easy) just remove the hard drive and directly mount it on a diff computer (this is what i did)
Thats sometimes the only way. But its way above the novice.
That sounds like a nasty virus. I wonder if its running the exe through java script or active x and if it requires interaction. A lot of time the whole pop up is a button. I tell people to CTRL-SHIFT-ESC and kill the task in task manager (I don't like to use CTRL-ALT-DEL). Now everytime my wife gets a pop up that says. "YOUR INFECTED, or CLICK HERE TO RUN VIRUS SCAN" she stops and calls me to stop it before it starts.
Viruses are a tricky thing and as soon as we find ways around them someone makes up a new way to trick you.
