anxxletiu

My wife received an email, supposedly from PayPal, asking for verification of the purchase of a Dell computer. We had not purchased anything with PayPal in over a year, and she never has had a PayPal account. When she used the indicated link, the site did not allow her to do anything. I am concerned she may have been led to the site so that some malicious spyware could be downloaded onto our computer. I am considering buying a data/file wiping program to clean the whole hard drive to rid it of any unwanted software. Does that make sense and if I do, is it possible that any malicious code could hide in Windows XP, or do I have to wipe off Windows as well and reload it?