I run Norton on a daily basis and have email scanned as well. No viruses have come up. For the second time in two weeks, I have lost all of my settings. The first time, I was able to use system restore successfully. This time, system restore will not work.
1. Is there any other way to try to get back my settings?
2. Any thoughts on what type of virus this is? And how to detect it?
3. Any thoughts on a solution? Do I reinstall my operating system completely? If this is a virus attacking my hard drive, do I just throw the computer out the window?

All help is so greatly appreciated. I am desperate for information. Thanks!

You are not the only one having this problem. I have two pcs that I use regularly; some settings have vanished on both machines. I am also using an updated antivirus program.

I also repaired a laptop for a friend last week. Her problem was that she lost all the drivers for her modem.

Several times this week, my laptop lost its modem settings, too.

I think there is a strange trojan or something out there that hasn't been labeled yet.

Well at least I know it is not just me. What did you do with your PCs? The Dell technician suggested that I reload my operating system (XP), but will that eliminate the virus?

I'm not exactly sure what I will do with my pcs yet. Luckily, I have multiple partitions and multiple operating systems. It is my "C" drive that is whacky on two of my home computers. Both of them have another operating system on their "D" drives.

I am running a cleanup utility from their D drives. I'm cleaning up a lot of garbage files, and outdated, unassociated registry entries. I also ran the Microsoft System File Checker (sfc.exe) on my laptop. My laptop still will not completely shut down or restart. I need to use the reset button.

My next step will be to follow the step-by-step registry editing instructions that are included with some of Symantec's, and PC-Cillin's individual virus cleaners.

I know that I received several variants of the Klez virus in my email attachments. My antivirus program detected them, and cleaned and deleted them. At least that's what it reported. I think that my antivirus program did not "completely" eradicate my systems from this Klez thing.

Right now, my machines remain fully functional. My modem settings have remained normal for a few days, and the only strange stuff that remains is the shutdown problem. (Oh, my keyboard uninstalled itself too!)

I also will contact Trend Micro's tech support for PC-Cillin; and I'll explain my dilema to them. There is something else that I noticed with my antivirus program. I noticed that my anti-trojan portion of the program is no longer functioning. It is updated; but not functional.

I still think that Klez has caused some damage that antivirus products have not yet found a solution for. I have tried several other ones, including: Norton, McAfee, and Panda. I even installed two different trojan cleaners, to no avail.

You mentioned that Dell suggested reloading your operating system. That's a big step, and a last resort for me. I certainly hope we both fare well through this. I'll keep you posted.

Farewell,
onlooker

Well.....if you already have a trojan horse...reinstalling alone might not do it. Trojan Horses are RAM Resident suckerd! My suggestion is to run a trojan horse remover and nail it that way....rebooting should always be your last resort. And if you do reboot...make sure you reformat your hard drive (erase and reconfigure the whole thing) before reinstalling XP. Dont just reinstall over the damaged version because reinstalling it that way doesnt completely erase all the files that may be infected.