I don't want to start a virus thread. But this is beyond my expertise. And I am at home.I got a 'hijack' virus that beat Norton (home version). Then while cleaning that I got something else.I followed these instructions to get rid of it:http://www.able2know.com/forums/about21407.htmlAt this point I've run Norton AntiVirus 2000, Ad-aware 6, Spybot, abd CWSshrreder. Still, something called 'downlad.Trojan' in my Windows Temp file comes back to life.Advice, or good websites, or methods or tools better than those I have employed I would be most grateful for.

At home I usually have 2+ virus scanners installed, one live (Norton 2004), and one+ dormant (AVG's free version). This usually works a treat and I can play them off each other.If you've tried all else, try installing AVG. You could use this as an excuse to format the bad boy, if you have backups. I like a clean box with a fresh Windows installation every 6 months...

Thank you.I forgot to mention I am running the 0.5 version (free trial) of "Registry Mechanic" as well.This one is awful. Keeps comming back from the grave.

James,Do you have a Firewal? If not get the Norton Antivirus with Firewall (or any other), this will actively stop viruses from getting to your PC and will block the open port as well which most Trojans/Viruses use to get to your machine. Not fool proof but a lot better.Rgds

Many mention Norton. I use TrendMicro, e.g. Internet Security which has good reviews and is apparently less clunky than Norton etc.

I personnaly use KAV, in my life at several occasions it found viruses when others didn't (i.e. Norton)http://www.kaspersky.ch/

I usually find Norton fairly useless and a bit of a memory hog. Similar to Crauss, I prefer TrendMicro. If the trojan virus continues to spawn, it might be due to a program that is infected in the background. What you might want to do is start the virus scan with the least amount of processes running in the background (sometimes with closing almost close to all processes to a point where there is nothing left on the windows screen besides the virus scan and I mean nothing else pretty much almost close to shutting down the entire system where even the taskbar is gone). Also, TrendMicro has a free virus scan on the web called Housecall that works reasonably well. Or you can load the Windows in safe-mode and run a virus scan from there again with minimal processes. Hope this helps.

i find that by using by pegasus as my mail program and firefox as my browser I don't get infected

James: The security stuff you have should be fine. With FireWalls you need to spend some time configuring them. If youcan set an `internet machine' aside which the internet in accessed through then you will just need to lock back this machine.The internet machine will not be that functional but.... Just configure Nortaon so that everythingcoming in other than Port 80,81, (maybe some others) ports are blocked. Going out is not a problem. The key is stoppinganything getting inside your network, once something is written on a machine in the network you are finished.As I recall Norton has this feature in which you can enable "Applications", This is a complete lie since if you enable aapplication to use some port XYZ then in fact any applicaiton on your machine can use this port. It Norton is set up withsuch permission then take them all off the configure everything in terms of port numbers.

"I usually find Norton fairly useless and a bit of a memory hog."I have found this too, slows up anything in background (running big matricies, I turn it off, etc.).Many thanks for y'all's comments.I do not know what got me, but it was something both bad and clever, thankfully not a 'tapeworm' that ate files.The total re-install route (I upgraded to XP at the time (I know)) has made things better, and I can only hope that the patches going forward will prevent reoccurance.I think there is a diminishing effectiveness curve of OS support as time goes on: i.e. pathces for my Win98 became less capable of preventing infection.I have a modem with built in fire wall, and Norton, and also run the other programs periodically. Ouch! What else need I do? Read every line of my registry every day? Ouch.Thanks again y'all.

QuoteOriginally posted by: JamesI have a modem with built in fire wall, and Norton, and also run the other programs periodically. Ouch! What else need I do? Read every line of my registry every day? Ouch.A simple suggestion would involve stop downloading the pr0n from p2p programs

"downloading the pr0n from p2p programs"okay, what is that and how do I do it? (sorry, me dum)