Hello, I recently deleted trojan's from my computer b/c i had recieved a message from zone alarm that my computer was trying to send out messages. I have roadrunner, and of course I have to use Outlook to access my email, which I've already stopped using because riched20.exe was infected and i had to delete it and i thought that was the root of the problem. I was wrong, i thought everything was going fine but zone alarm again told me yesterday that my computer was sending emails from the file c:\windows\explorer.exe but i can't delete it just like that. I found a way on how i would be able to delete the file BUT the only problem is, how would i reinstall it b/c i do know the consequences of what can happen if i delete it. when on zone alarm i disable the "send mail" on explorer.exe zone alarm doesn't have traffic, but if i enable it back on, it will continue to send stuff. I've run anti-virus programs and they dont' detect the problem, they say i'm trjan/virus/spyware free, but i keep on getting this notification of zonealarm that c:\windows\explorer.exe is trying to send out emails, i'm really tired of this virus using my roadrunner address to send out spam. also the wierd thing is that it tells me the file is explorer.exe but when i go to the windows folder the file is only as explorer.exe, with exe showing up with lower case letters not capital letters like zonealarm tells me, i have the option to see hidden files, so i know it's not hidden, i just find it strange. I don't want to re-format my pc bc i'm a college student and have a lot of my work on the pc and it would take forever to save all my stuff and reformat, etc. so i really need some help please. i'm just confused all around on how to go about to do this from deleting it to reinstalling it. any help would be really appreciated thanks! ^_^

Ali, FWIW, my gut tells me you are allright and that it's nothing more sinister than checking for new mail. A nasty of some sort is always possible. In order to prove it one way or another, set your mail to check at some specific interval (like 5 or 10 min.) and see if you get alerts any other time. If you still get the alerts all the time, I'm lost. HTH. Ed in Texas.

Switch to Mozilla or Firefox browser and Thunderbird email. Faster and more secure. I use them with RR, so I know there are no glitches. If you don't want to switch, turn off system restore, boot in safe mode, uninstall/reinstall IE and OE. (Make sure you have new/updated versions downloaded first.) I would suggest going into the registry and deleting all traces of IE and OE, but if you don't know what you are doing in there LEAVE IT ALONE!!!! You can kill your whole system by messing with the registry. Reboot in normal mode and turn on system restore. Reboot again. That should take care of your problem. Also, run a search for explorer.exe then explorer.exe. Compare results and delete the problem file. Spybot Search and Destroy has an excellent file shredder. Use it.