Hello. In the time I've used a computer and the internet I've never had a virus or trojan or anything...unfortunatly today that changed. Whilst it has been dealt with and has caused no probs at all, I'm extremely curious as to how I got it in the first place, I don't want it to happen again either. I reformated my Hard-Drive and returned it to its original settings. Then I installed Norten Antivirus 2003. I also installed spybot, ad-aware, Zonealarm and various other programs. I then updated all of these progs and my OS over the internet. Once that was all done, I emptied my browser of cookies and it's history, ran ad-aware and also did a virus scan. Alexa was present, so i deleted that, my antivirus turned up nothing. So good so far. Later, after booting up my pc, I connected to the internet.Once connected, as my homepage started to download I Imediatly recieved the alert. The particular problem file was WINDOWS\History\History.IE5\MSHist012003062120030622, an index.dat file. it's liklyhood listed as rare and was classified as a trojan. If anyone can tell me, how the hell did I get it? and what does this particular trojan do? was it downloaded from my homepage? (www.freeserve.com) I'd be gratefull for any explanation, like I said, i dont want this to happen again. Thankyou.

any download you ALLOW could potentially be a trojan, even a small chance, even with all your scan detectors in place. The web is full of that stuff so being can only go so far, and who knows really where it originated?

No advice on how you got it, since EC pretty much covered that (except that you could also get it through email attachments - which I guess also falls under EC's comment about downloads). Anyway, AV programs don't always handle/take care of trojans well. Consider getting a trojan scanner/remover. The Cleaner is a good one (by Moosoft) but there are others out there, with Trojan Remover possibly being better at identifying and removing them before and after they infect your computer Install one of them and everytime you download something from a site or someone you don't trust, and before opening it, right click on it and you can select to scan it for trojans and also to scan it with an AV program (I assume that Norton AV is also listed when you right click a file, but am not sure as I don't use Norton products)

Yes norton will be listed, but if its an archive aftre you scan it, extract it to a dedicated directory and then rescan it again, Ive found viruses and trojans in archives that both norton and the cleaner have said were ok untill i extracted them and rescanned them, some of them not very nice ones. Woof