You're most welcome, glad the problem is fixed.
Below I have included some ideas on how to prevent future infections.
Please consider using these ideas to help secure your computer. While there is no way to guarantee safety when you use a computer, these steps will make it much less likely that you will need to endure another infection. While we really like to help people, we would rather help you protect yourself so that you won't need that help in the future.
Please navigate to
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and download all the Critical Updates for Windows. These will patch many of the security holes through which attackers can gain access to your computer.
Please either enable
Automatic Updates under Start -> Control Panel -> Automatic Updates or get into the habit of checking Windows Update regularly. They usually have security updates every month. You can set Windows to notify you of Updates so that you can choose, but only do this if you believe you are able to understand which ones are needed.
This is a crucial security measuer.
As a minimum, you need at least an antivirus, firewall and some type of anti-spyware program.
Some good free firewalls are
ZoneAlarm,
Kerio, or
Outpost
A tutorial on understanding and using firewalls may be found
here.
I notice you are runn Ad-Aware, which is good. You might also want to consider installing and running some of the following programs; they are either
free or have free versions of commercial programs, and will work along with Ad-Aware to prevent further infections.:
Spybot-Search & Destroy
A tutorial on using Spybot to remove spyware from your computer may be found
here. Please also remember to enable Spybot's
Immunize and TeaTimer features if you don't have the resident part of another anti-spyware program running.
SpywareBlaster
A tutorial on using SpywareBlaster to prevent malware from ever installing on your computer may be found
here.
SpywareGuard
A tutorial on using SpywareGuard for real-time protection against spyware and hijackers may be found
here.
If you use Internet Explorer, it is a good idea to use
IE-Spyad which provides protections against malicious websites.
Please
keep these programs up-to-date and run them whenever you suspect a problem to prevent malware problems. A number of programs (including Ad-Aware) have resident protection and it is a good idea to run the resident protection of one of each type of program to maintain protection. However, it is important to run only one resident program of each type since they can conflict and become less effective. That means only one antivirus, firewall and scanning anti-spyware program at a time. Passive protectors, like SpywareBlaster and IE-Spyad can be run with any of them.
Note that there are a lot of rogue programs out there that want to scare you into giving them your money and some malware actually claims to be security programs. If you get a popup for a security program that you did not install yourself, do NOT click on it and ask for help immediately. It is very important to run an antivirus and firewall, but you can't always rely on reviews and ads for information. Ask in a security forum that you trust if you are not sure. If you are unsure are looking for anti-spyware programs, you can find out if it is a rogue here:
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm
Please consider using an
alternate browser. Mozilla's Firefox browser is a very good alternative. In addition to being generally more secure than Internet Explorer, it has a very good built-in popup blocker and add-ons, like NoScripts, can make it even more secure. Opera is another good option.
If you are interested, Firefox may be downloaded from
here
Opera is available here:
http://www.opera.com/download/
Hopefully these steps will help to keep you error free. If you run into more difficulty, we will certainly do what we can to help.
