Fucking viruses

[Crayz9000]

The biggest problem is that much of this software hooks itself into the system files, so it is impossible to remove even in Safe mode as Explorer thinks it's now a system file and protects it from deletion. The only way I've been able to actually rid a computer of this junk is to load a rescue CD such as Trinity Rescue Kit and do a scan+fix with every available AV engine (usually a combination of ClamAV+F-Protect+Mcafee, whichever ones can actually update). Sometimes I'll also have to manually delete the infection.

I've managed to successfully do this several times on infected computers where installing a new copy of Windows was not an option, however it almost always took close to a full day to make sure the computer was clean, and on some the Windows Registry was corrupted beyond help so a reinstallation was unavoidable in the long run.