This is really curious, being that both instances happened last night. On 2 separate laptops (Dell Latitude C640 & D610, I picked up trojan horses. My virus scanner reported as follows: (D610) File: C:\pagefile.sys Result: Infection: HTML:\F Operation: File was sucessfully deleted. (C640) File: C:\pagefile.sys Result: Infection Win32 P Operation: File was sucessfully deleted. Is these files necessary for my laptop's OS to survive? And what a coincidence that both happened last night. I was using a "hot spot" to download some long files (Linux distros). They scanned clean. I also used the Windows Live Safety Scanner and thay produced no negative results. I use Avast 4.8 anti-virus on both laptops. When I scan the XP partition, it scans Windows 2000 Pro as well. I never have problems with that OS, in fact, my only virus problems came with XP Pro. Do I have anything to be concerned about, or is my virus protection just doing it's job?

First, your virrus protection is doing it's job. You might get infected by some of the many security issues, Microsoft tries to solve by the monthly security updates. So it's absolutely necessary to update your windows monthly, to close the known security holes in the WinXP system.

Yes, I understand that Avast is doing it's job by deleting the files, but will I need them in the future? Are these important system files? I want my virus protection to do it's job, but not to disable or "crash" my system. Thanks for the above info.

The pagefile.sys is a system file, that is used to swap things from the system memory to that file in case, when there is not enough system memory (RAM) available.

I've done a reinstall from the backup that I made as soon as I installed XP Pro and all of my favorite programs. Hopefully, this will solve my problem. Thanks to all for your suggestions. This is one place that provides solutions to ALL brands of operating systems. And I read through the posts as well, and when I feel that I have a possible answer, I make a suggestion as well. I feel that this forum is the BEST online. Everyone chips in, that's what family is all about. Thanks to you all, that includes the owner(s) and staff of this self-help forum.