[backhoe]

The SWI forum is excellent, and their front page should have a list of other forums, like Spyware Warriors, if that's more to your liking.

Basically, you register with them, check all their "pinned" or "sticky" posts to see what kind of info they require to help you, and go from there.

It usually takes several tries to purge that garbage, and it really helps to have an experienced forum helper read your logs and guide you through it. There's a lot of damage you can do without guidance, because sometimes you have to edit the registry as well.

[TheLion]

I was reading on www.theeldergeek.com (forum) and got a great link that explains the CWS virus (CoolWebSearch)and how to remove it manually:

http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/CoolWebSearch.html

The about:blank cws virus is constantly changing and coming up with more ways to infect our computers.

You are right, at some point, you do need to edit the registry.

[TheLion]

Thanks for rementioning the SWI forum....outstanding! At some point soon, I may post my hijackthis results and let them analyze it.

[TheLion]

Thought I would let you know that I got rid of my computer infection....after much reading, downloading and trying different things.

I found this gread little free program called X-raypc. It is 317kb but very useful. It identified 2 processes that I had seen come up in the Anti-Vir and Microsoft AntiSpyware. Processes that these programs simple blocked.

X-Raypc not only identifies the running processes but will let you get rid of it, whereas these other programs wouldn't.

These were running processes that don't show up in taskmanager.

Check it out!

http://www.x-raypc.com/