reader_s virus

[RedFury]

I caught this thing on my machine and it's really kicking my butt!

It's a real PITA. It can download itself if a single little trace is left behind supposedly, and it puts itself on every HDD and partition it can find ( including my thumbdrive! )

AVAST, AVG, Spybot search and destroy, HiJackThis! and Adaware can't get rid of it, but some see it, some don't and some don't see all the files (I can see bad files as it scans and glosses over ).

Apparently the only real way to get rid of it is to wipe the drive back to factory original setting. Reinstalling a ghost image, or just a simple format and clean install won't get rid of it

Hopefully I can save some of the files I thought I thought were protected by being on separate drives/partitions.

This sucks. I don't know if I got it from a file I downloaded, a site I visited, or an email I opened ( email being a known carrier )

[Atomic Rooster]

Have you tried Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and ran them while in safe mode with system restore turned off?

[RedFury]

Yup, tried that as well as some of the other programs suggested during a search online.

I ended up reinstalling Windows, but not by choice. I managed in my blind rage to delete some windows files and am recovering from what would have been the inevitable anyway, but I lost a lot of stuff I wanted to save before I did it, like my emails, address book, my bookmarks...y'know, the stuff you always forget to back up if you don't back up regularly?

I'll get over it, but tis a royal pain...I had my computer set up just the way I wanted it and it's all back to page 1 again...fortunately, SP3 saved my "lost" files by enabling Windows the ability to see the whole drive again...so I can back all of that up proper...whew!