Cool Web seems to involve a whole bunch of different sources and different bugs.
The particular problem I had was that one of my kids managed to infect MS Media Player. It LOOKED like media player, but something else had taken its place and disguised itself as Media Player. I had to delete it, clean up the Registry, and re-download Media Player from MS Update. But from the research I did at the time, there are dozens of different things various coolweb leeches can do to your computer, some no doubt worse than others.
Yep. And these b***ards are not without a perverted sense of humor:
Before I got the last AdAware update, I kept getting an XXX site-file downloaded, with a desktop icon and everything. The program could actually disable my AdAware program the first two runs....there was a "ts" on the task bar when it froze. Finally dawned on me that it was "Tough S**t"!!!
I'm being barraged. I have to run the AdAware before and after every connection. I have many bots mentioned above. And, when you eliminate them, they have back-up that attempt to re-install, apparently. Gotta run twice when you get 'em the first time. Grrrrrrr