General Computer Questions, Etc.

[Thorne]

Just a few notes that might help you out.

Download SpyBot Search & Destroy, from Safer Networking. It's free and I've found it to be very helpful. When installing, allow it to turn on Tea Timer. This starts up with your computer and runs in the background, notifying you of any changes to your registry. It can stop a virus from doing any further harm. There is also an add-on for Internet Explorer that can help. One feature that might prove useful is to have Spybot run at boot-up, hopefully catching the problems before they can run. It's pretty good for a free product.

Another one I've found helpful is something called Malwarebytes, another free program. Easy to use and fairly extensive. Regular updates, several times a week.

Good luck! I know it can be a real pain to take care of this crap.

[Midnytedreams]

It sounds like you have a FAT virus , once a virus gets into the FAT {file allocation table}
it replicates and stays there most virus programs don't scan the FAT as it isn't the files on your computer but the way the files are seen and used, one byte of information corrupted and the computer can't recognize the file, the file is clean, but the way its read and processed isn't, I personally don't use any of the virus programs offered but use one from my internet provider that scans data before it even is seen by my computer.
Bigfish it is freeware has a warning on there site that they are not responsible because anyone can download and upload games to it

Back up your files, run the best virus scan and prepare to reload windows, you will have to scrub it completely clean...run the fdisk program in windows from bootup, and delete the FAT completely then build another and format the HD ... then reload windows...restore will not set the FAT back only the files.

[Thorne]

Another resource you can use is the Norton (or McAfee) website. They have detailed instructions for removing viruses. Most involve editing the registry, which can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Run your scans and, if you do find a virus, check it out on the antivirus websites to see if it can be removed completely.