Actually, I don't think you have a serious issue. It just needs careful
hunting down. Do just one thing at a time though, do not download every anti
malware known to man and take the compter back to an earlier time all at
once. That is not only the way to insanity, but to completely trashing the
Windows operating system. It may well be amulti tsking system but it can
only cope with one bit of abuse at a time!

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________


"Tim Lamb" wrote in message
news
In message , Martin Brown
writes
On 29/01/2014 09:16, Tim Lamb wrote:
In a momentary fit of insanity I allowed an offering of Explorer 8.0 (I
think) to download.

The only visible consequence is an overnight firing up of Explorer such
that I am greeted each morning with a Windows related advert.
Curiously the screen is prevented from entering sleep mode.

Today's offering was for a Windows driver scanner for a Brother printer.

I am using XP with service pack 3. I know this system is about to be
unsupported so am becoming very nervous about anything uninvited!

Any thoughts?

Do you have another computer that you can use to make a bootable CD to
scan this machine for any known malware? Corrupting IE to make it show
adverts or hijack keystrokes is unfortunately all too common.

Only my wife's laptop (running Vista) This sounds to be beyond my current
skill set:-(

You can't trust the main machine any more. There are some tools that use
enough obfuscation that they might be able to detox an infected machine
without being noticed by the malware. I have found MalwareBytes to work
fairly well on other peoples infected PCs YMMV

http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebyte...-10804572.html

OK Noted. Thanks



--
Tim Lamb