Please, please help me. I use outlook express for my email. Apparently, something has taken over. A virus, a trojan, I don't know. Massive amounts of mail are being sent from my email to random addresses. I am being flooded with up to 500 "returned mail" notices at a time. I have ran AVG, AdAware, and Spybot. I shut down outlook, but the emails are still going out. What can I do? What can I run? I'm out of options and this is driving me crazy!

1st, UNPLUG the NIC to stop them (no internet access, nothing goes out)! Turn off "System Restore". What AntiVirus product are you using? Boot into "Safe Mode" (with networking) to see if you can get the latest virus definitions for whatever you have. If you can get them, scan in "Safe Mode". If not scan at: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ or http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php If you have a friend with a GOOD AV package and is tech savvy, he can slave your HD into his machine and scan it for you. Without knowing the name of the culprit, exact procedures are just guesses. If you can find the name of whatever infection you have, Symantic has a large battery of removal tools to download. http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/tools.list.html Now to get a bit more practical, 4 kids? Kids are known to download EVERYTHING that is offered to them. Get a GOOD AV package and keep it updated! XP, Sp1? Not keeping up on your Windoze Updates! Those updates are to protect you from worms and other sorts of hacks. Many of which are "mass mailers". Make ALL the kids "Restricted Users", that will prevent them from running executables. If they want something installed or downloaded, they have to come to mom & dad to get it done. Your right, the kids won't be overly happy about that. Customer had the exact same problem. I asked him who ran his house, "The parents or the kids?" After I handed him the bill for 6 hours work on his computer, the kids became "Restricted Users" and the problems stopped! _________________________ The internet is no longer a toy, it's a COMBAT ZONE!

Your machine is probably not infected. My guess is that your email address is being spoofed, which would explain why you're receiving the delivery failures. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do to stop this.

That was my first thought Jenn, as mine is often spoofed too. I think she might have something because of the volume of "returned mail". She also stated that "massive" amounts of mail are being sent from her machine, although she hasn't stated how she knows it's her machine sending it. _________________________ The internet is no longer a toy, it's a COMBAT ZONE!