Sudden Infection

[Anyhoo]

Here is the issue for which I require assistance:

Two days ago I was browsing the internet, and at one point my computer became very slow and unresponsive. I believe IE was installing something on my PC at this point, but totally without my permission and knowledge. Pretty soon a red "X" icon appeared in my system tray and started displaying all kinds of messages that my computer was infected and I needed to run a spyware program. At the same time all kinds of processes (Spyware, of course) was spawning, which I killed from the "Task Manager" as quickly as I could, but at this point my system was compromised, so I shut down the PC and rebooted, hoping that it was just a temporary infection. No such luck. When I rebooted, I found that the Desktop and Task bar would not display, and that the Task Manager was disabled. Later the desktop changed from the normal blue background to a strange colored pattern. Everytime I reboot after that into my main User Account (I am running Windows XP with multiple user accounts), the colored pattern appears and I can do nothing. Strangely, I can log on to another account of the same computer, which does not show the task bar and desktop, but the Task Manager is NOT disabled for this other user account, so I was able to start Explorer manually to see the desktop and taskbar.

So the problem I have is how to "fix" what is wrong with the PC, mainly on the main user account. The problem appears to be in the HKCU in the registry of that one account, and I cannot do anything on the PC if I try to login under that account. I tried doing a "System Restore" from the secondary account to a point before all of this happened, but that apparently just restored HKCU in the registry for the secondary account, not for all accounts on the computer, so the same issue remained.

I hope this made sense. I am happy to answer any questions anyone has. Thanks in advance for helping me get this off of my PC.

[tetonbob]

Hello and Welcome.

We want all our members to perform the steps outlined in the link I'll give you below, before posting for assistance. There's a sticky at the top of this forum, and a

Having problems with spyware and pop-ups? First Steps

link at the top of each page.

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