Great!
Everything seems to be back to normal except for one thing, which is that when I restart the computer, I am getting one or two notifications that a program has had to close - most often the one mentioned in my post a few days ago 'IEEE 1284.4 - 1999 Network Driver (Windows) encountered a problem and needs to close'. However, this doesn't seem to have any effect that I have noticed. Is this perhaps a question I should put in the Windows XP Support forum?
And thanks for all the recommendations, which I have implemented.
As a result of looking over the articles you linked to, I have also downloaded and run SpyWareblaster.
btw the two links to
www.forums.spywareinfo.com no longer work - at first I thought it might be the upgraded Hosts file blocking access, but then I worked out that the site name must have changed (to
www.spywareinfoforum.com) and found the articles.
Your own article at malwareremoval.com is very instructive.
Sincere thanks again for your time and effort. The site is a great resource and it's a wonderful thing you're doing. Please keep up the good work!