I've had a problem with various spyware, etc, but suspect I still have some problems. I've downloaded various programs to detact and destroy, and also have Kaspersky Personal Anti-virus and Norton Professional 2004. Should any of the scans from these be run in safe mode? My point is, my PC runs slow and I'm sure I still have a dialer or hijacker lurking somewhere. I sometimes see the screen shift almost imperceptably, and have noticed an icon flash very quickly on closing my dialer that looks very similar to the Microsoft OneNote thingy - four colours as interlinking squares. Any clues or advice would be welcomed. I'm running Windows 98 and am fairly new at all of this. I've had a quick look through this forum and can't find anything that seems as particular as this. Cheers in advance

hi ute, lets try this to see if you have any lodgers. hit your start button and go to Run in your Win 98 box. hit Run, and then type in the word "command" (without quotes), a box will open up and where you see the cursor flashing, type in "netstat -an"(without quotes). you will then see it open up with the title of active connextions with 4 columns: proto, local address, remote address, state. if there is anything in remote address, then you should make note of the address and port in the remote address section, and if it corresponds to the remote address section and says established in the state column, you have lodgers. next go to www.thepublicworks.com, security section, and link to Tantalo Ports, put the port number you noted down and click on search. it should tell you if you have a trojan, and where to find info on it. if you are trojaned, get the latest anti-virus, anti-trojan, spybot, and adaware definitions. go to safe mode, and scan your machine with the scanners, make note of and delete all files they come up with. reboot your computer and do a search for those files and delete them. also check your task or process list by clicking control alt delete and end task on any file you find that are in the list you noted. reboot your machine. all the best, murve

Hope you don't mind me poking my nose in but this looked interesting. I'm not the original poster but in my W98(SE) it has "Foreign Address" instead of "remote address". Can I take it that this is the exact same thing? Derek.W

hi derek, yes you can. all the best, murve

Thx murve Derek.W

Thanks for the hints Murve, I'll give them a go over the next few days. Just to add to the fun, my PC now shows a Fatal Exception Error every few minutes whilst using the internet, so I may be some time... Cheers Ute