I believe I had a trojan virus about a month ago and had people impersonating me on a forum and my computer was running very slow. I manually removed the virus from a couple of spots including my task manager. I then got a virus scanner and moved 2 more virus to the AVG virus vault. I got a ZoneAlarm firewall. Everthing improved until about a week ago. On two seperate forums, somebody used one of my IP adresses. One message was clearly a trouble maker and the other was just short and odd. Yesterday, my virus scanners drive disapeared and made my AVG unusable. How can I know if I am being hacked? My virus scanner has not found a virus for a month now and my firewall seems to be working and I have looked in a few places and can't find anything suspicious. I even removed all my downloaded videos to the best of my ability. What should I do next?

Sounds like a good time for a fresh XP install(not upgrade or reinstall), the trojan .exe might be gone but could have wreaked havok on your registry and who knows what else? such as changing XP security settings... Unplug the network cable while installing XP, then immediatly put a uninfected ZA 3.7+ or 4.0 on there and setup to max security, then get your windows updates installed...etc, this way your more secure right away, be careful what you allow to act as server with ZA.

Are you saying that I should reformat with the restore disc that came with the computer? And what do you mean by "unplug the network cable". Isn't there a way to know for sure if I am being hacked? Reformatting is a very big and dangerous thing to do, if it fails then the computer is dead.

> Are you saying that I should reformat with the restore disc that came with the computer? YES I am saying this, cause you had a trojan on this windows install, still could be infected even if your AV program removed what it could. > And what do you mean by "unplug the network cable". When you run the restore disk dont be connected to Internet until you get a firewall installed, make sense? this way hackers cant get through your basic unsecure XP install at first. > Isn't there a way to know for sure if I am being hacked? Not always, all you can do is use a firewall and make sure its setup to notify you of intruders, keep logs...etc, but keep in mind a good hacker will know how to get in/out without being noticed (bypassing your firewall completely, so all you can do is use common sense to not be clicking on attachments, files you downloaded from some strange sites or p2p...etc, be careful and learn ZoneAlarm well.

by the way, if you dont know what your doing with a restore disk or have never installed XP by yourself, please find somebody that has, this is my disclaimer.