Well, I just went through a glorious experience of getting whacked with multiple trojans,viruses,malware,etc. Started directing me to strange web sites, wouldn’t let me open Explorer or Control Panel, wouldn’t let me go to anti-spyware web sites – took over my desktop background, etc.
I figured I was doomed, but the folks at Spybot, most notably Blade, saved my keester. These are volunteers who donate their time to help pitiful folks such as myself. 🙂 You post your problem and they tell you to run HiJackThis (which analyzes your system) and once analyzed they will have you download a number of programs (ComboFix,etc) to run and clean up your system. It’s not something you want to do without their help, I can say that, especially if you are not a very advanced user. But now I’m clean again and have switched from Zone Alarm for my firewall to Online Armor, am running an updated version of Java Cool’s Spyware Blaster, Avast Antivirus, backed up with scans from SuperAntiSpyware. In addition, I now use the great add-on (also suggested to me by Blade) called Virustotal, where you can upload any file you want to be analyzed by some 36 different virus programs. All you have to do is right click the file and click send to VirusTotal. That is sweet, for sure, especially if you download a lot of programs. Nice way to really analyze them before running them.
Log of a Traveling Junkie 