Help Odin Flash Failure & Virus Removal

[Kelvin S]

I recently bought a used Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini and it appears to be infected with viruses (I did several factory resets including at least 2 hard resets and there are random programs that stay installed). I want to remove them before actually using the phone as my main phone. The phone works however. It will both connect to the internet and make calls. I put the phone into download/developer mode prior to connecting it to the PC and I tried to use both Odin 3.09 and Odin 3.07 to put stock firmware I downloaded from www.sammobile.com onto the phone. I was following the guide located at http://www.droidviews.com/install-stock-firmware-on-samsung-galaxy-devices-using-odin/

Please help! I do not have a lot of money to buy a new phone which is why I bought this used one in the first place. I am using Windows 10 on my PC. Another question mark that may be hindering me is that I do not know what service the phone was originally tied to and the firmwares seem to be carrier based? I bought the phone in South Africa, but I do not know if it originated here.

The download bar never even began to move on the phone display during this process.

This is the fail message Odin 3.09 gave me

<ID:0/005> Added!!


<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..

<OSM> Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..

<OSM> Please wait..

<OSM> I8190XXAMC1_I8190OJVAMC3_HOME.tar.md5 is valid.

<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..

<OSM> Leave CS..

<ID:0/005> Odin v.3 engine (ID:5)..

<ID:0/005> File analysis..

<ID:0/005> SetupConnection..

<ID:0/005> Complete(Write) operation failed.

<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)