ok im posting this on behalf of a friend so please bear with me. I scanned it alright.. problem is that the virus was first acknowledged by Norton (My virusscanner) when I already had the virus for three days.. Name: compq32.exe Symptoms: 1)Can't open the virusscanner.. 2)Taskmanager doesnt open (untill I renamed it ) 3)Word, Excell etc won't open for 50% of the time.. 4)Internet Explorer refuses to work for 15% of the time (out of a 200 attempts, it opened 30 times.. yea I checked it..) Removal problems: Well.. there is an update to remove it with using Norton.. I only have to download it.. 1)I can't access the virusdefinitions updater.. 2)..But even if I can, I can't run the antivirus programme.. he is pretty certain that the virus is the W32/Sdbot-WH one. He is thinking of buying sophos anti-virus but is there any other way in which he can get rid of this virus? thanks in advance.

Try starting the computer in Safe-Mode and running your anti-virus. You can find directions at my homepage(link above) for Safe-Mode, though this won't give you intenet access. You can download the latest defs for Norton first here, maybe on another machine if necessary, and install them in safe mode (from floppy or cd), then scan: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/defs.download.html Or, you can download an evaluation (trial) version of Sophos from their site www.sophos.com.

From the computer that you are on download Stinger from McAfee to a diskette if you have a floppy drive, write protect it with the plastic slider, then run it. If you have no floppy drive try it with a cd. Most likey your host file has been changed by the virus to block access to any online antivirus/scanner sites so you may need to download the program at this link http://members.aol.com/toadbee/hoster.zip to restore the host file. Copy it to a floppy or cd, run it and click "restore original host". To view your host file navigate to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\host open with notepad or wordpad. You can view a normal host file at this link http://accs-net.com/hosts/how_to_use_hosts.html. Then try to logon to a free online virus scanner such as Trendmicro or Panda

well he was able to get norton running again and was able to get an update that finally got rid of the virus , I ahve informed him that he will proberly need to clean the registry as well . I also told him to do some online scans just to be sure. thanks guys!