help!!! i made a huge mistake the other day and downloaded a music program (bad judgement, i know, i know) and naturally it put a huge amount of miscellaneous programs/pests/spyware onto my machine that now won't go away. i updated and ran both PestPatrol and Sophos *several* times and manually removed a couple of files, but internet explorer is still having problems; my (legitimately downloaded) Google toolbar keeps randomly disappearing, popups are getting through it quite frequently when it does work, and pages keep loading very slowly or not at all, sometimes replaced with a page from one of the pest sites (amazingautossearch.com, which apparently doesn't exist). also, even though PestPatrol claims it deleted a so-called "hijacker" pest, my homepage is continually reset to the aforementioned page with something like .../passthrough?myactualhomepage.com added to the address. PestPatrol and Sophos continue to turn up nothing, and a search through Windows Explorer revealed one file that i can't seem to delete (error message when i try). again, help please!!! the page freezes seem to be happening more frequently and i'm wondering if there's something else on my computer that's a bit more malicious than an annoying popup site. that, and i'm tired of kicking myself for ruining a brand new computer... so if there's any way to fix it i'd love to know!!! thank you!!!

you certainly did not ruin your pretty new computer! check a few posts earlier than yours for suggestions on good cleanup /prevention software. http://computing.net/security/wwwboard/forum/10758.html

I also just had this exact problem and followed the advice in the other forum. The program that seemed to get rid of this was "HiJack This" which was suggested in the other thread. Just wanted to throw that out there for future reference. Thanks for your help, too, guys!