First of all, you should be your own security guard for your machine. This means, you should be careful while your surfing unknown webpages, or even if you're IRC addicted do not ever click on links advertised by unknown nicknames or even files shared via IRC. To get more into setting up your machines maximum security level.. First of all get FireFox if you haven't installed it yet and get rid of IE. And you could search the net for FireFox high security options so you can configure your browser. Even if you're using IE.. Install SP2 immediately.. it'll help you to stop popups and automatically ActiveX installations.
Now lets move into 'once you got infected.. what to do'.
Just running a single AV will not always get the worms\trojans\viruses on your machine, head over to
http://housecall.trendmicro.com and do an online, free, full system scan and be sure and have the 'Auto Clean' button checked. Make sure youve visited Windows Update and applied all security patches, do not install driver updates from Windows Update. Be sure to update these programs before running, and it is a good idea to do virus/spyware scans in Safe Mode. Make sure you are able to see all hidden files and extensions (View tab in Folder Options). Also your hosts file may have been corrupted or even deleted, point your browser to
http://members.aol.com/toadbee/hoster.zip and download the program. When it opens, click on the Restore Original Hosts button and then exit. This would also be a good time to set a new system restore point for your machine, please fire up your browser to
http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp and read about to set a new system restore point. Does your resident av setup contain a firewall? If not, please get one right away.
HijackThis is an excellent tool to discover and disable hijackers, but it requires expert skill.
If you need more information regarding viruses, trojans or even security in general please don't hesitate to post it here so we could find a fix for you.
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