Can a virus/spyware travel over a home network?

[jLittle]

A little over a year ago, hackers got into my mother-in-law's pc. (They made her desktop go crazy then popped up a window saying, "This is microsoft support; if you need help call us at..."
So she called me and I formatted her HD and reinstalled windows but I've never felt really sure that whatever was in her pc was gone, because I don't know how she got it in the first place. For that matter, I don't know that she didn't do the same thing again and pick up something else.

Anyway, I now have her pc and I forgot about the business with the hackers and hooked up her pc to my home network with an ethernet cable for about 15 minutes.

If there actually is something still in her pc, what are the chances that it's now in mine? (I feel like I'm calling an STD help line! )

Her pc is an emachines ET1831-05; Celeron 450 (2.20 GHz), 3 GB DDR2 RAM, 500 GB HDD, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Thanks

[SpywareDr]

Yes it is possible for an infected computer to infect other computers on the same network.

If you had a firewall, all Windows updates, an anti-virus, and other anti-malware hardware and software running on your computer though, the chances of your computer being infected when you attached an infected PC to your network would be greatly reduced.

[jLittle]

Well, I have Avast AV (up to date), Windows Firewall, and I see that there are 5 security updates not installed yet. I didn't think it was cool to have more than one anti-malware program running at one time.

[SpywareDr]

Two anti-virus programs running at the same time can cause problems.

[jLittle]

Okay, thanks.

[SpywareDr]

No problem.

[LaoRa]

I can advice you to run full system scan using free version of Spybot Search&Destroy or Malwarebytes.

[SpywareDr]

Recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Virus. Spybot Search & Destroy is past its sell by date.