Virus survives through clean OS install?

[Jmaloney]

I have a coworker that is having strange issues on his dell laptop. Sorry I dont have a lot of details, but heres a basic rundown--

The longer he is in windows, the more difficult it gets to use the touchpad... Like, it registers your finger, but it makes the mouse cursor jump all over the place, plugging in a USB mouse fixes the issue.

It also brings up the windows search tool constantly, and the more you close the window, the more search windows that pop up.
Obviously this seems like it would be some kind of malware, but he did a fresh Install of Windows Vista and wiped the hard drive last night and the issue still persisted...

I was thinking maybe he has a jump drive with a virus or someone on his network could be hosting...

Any thoughts?


Edit-- before the clean OS install we had him bring it and we used malwarebytes and removed about 6 or so trojans... the problem came back when he went home.

 

[KSoD]

It could still be on the machine. It could be living on the recovery partition. If that is seen from within the install there is a chance that it is there and infecting the machine even after a reinstall. I would suggest using GParted to format the system though. The built in format tools with the Vista install stinks.