The computer I am working on has all the symptoms of the FASTO worm. The insulting textpad messages. It has modified the registry so that I cannot run regedit or task manager. I found some of the tell-tale .pif files such as Fat Elvis! lol.pif on the computer and deleted them. I cannot, however see any of the programs that are supposed to be running. lspt.exe - formatsys.exe - serbw.exe - msmbw.exe. I cannot load an anti-virus prgramme as I cannot run an executable. Can annyone help?

The first thing you need to do is go online and scan your system using a web-based virus scanner. Unfortunately, this worm probably has blocked access to such sites. But you can unblock them. Windows NT/2000 have a file hidden in the C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc directory called hosts. Hosts is a file with no extension that blocks sites that are listed in it. Delete this file (it will automatically be recreated with no entries). Now go to a site that offers web-based virus scanning. I recommend Panda's ActiveScan [It requires email registration]. It uses an Active-X control to check your system, so you need to use Internet Explorer. Now, to keep your system tools unblocked, rename them with the .com extension (which, like .exe, are executable). Rename regedit.exe to regedt.com and taskmgr.exe to taskmgr.com. Once you have done this and web-scanned your system for viruses, then get an anti-virus program for your PC so you can remove any leftover traces of the Fatso.Worm virus. [I recommend AntiVir PE, www.antivir.de].

Locate your regedit.exe file, change it to .com, and you can then open it and make the necessary changes. Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!