A friends computer suddenly shut down while he was using it. He had not updated his antivirus software. Afraid he had a virus, he deleted all downloaded files, updated the antivirus program but it found nothing. Now the computer stays on but runs very slow, prints slow too. I suggested he get another updated antivirus software and give it a spin, at least a trial version...I like and use EZ Antivirus. Could this be caused by one of the worms out there and why would his computer run so slow now? Thanks for any help.

Something could have slipped by his AV software. Have him go to TrendMicro Housecall and PandaScan, then rescan his computer online.

Thanks for the info and links...I will do that tomorrow when I stop by his place...I will let you know...

Actually, yes it does! I tried to add a clip art to an email and it totally froze. What made you think of that? Cheers, Dan =================== Daniel J. Murfitt ARC (UK) Systems Ltd. =================== http://www.chunkychips.net for high performance ADSL

...it seems TrendMicro cannot detect anything and Panda hasn't worked for him, it doesn't start scanning. Anyway, using other AV and RegVAc software, a message came up saying something about "Downloader Keenval.m" trojan virus cannot be removed so that must be the problem...which is a variant of "Downloader" which also explains why the machine is running so slow too. Hope to find a way to remove this thing without having to reformat and reinstall. I am thinking that the trojan removers from Microsoft for Blaster or Sasser might help? I used the remover for Blaster last year myself and it worked well.

Just to update...another friend came by while I was at the problem computer residence. He uninstalled alot of programs not being used which were installed by Dell and AOL and now the computer seems to work much better. I still believe a virus is lurking in the system but the guy who owns the computer is not ready to reinstall the OS because he makes his living on the net and is still formulating a backup of important files. So far nothing has found the trojan and the dude doesn't want to lose any restore points by turning it off...booting into safemode would not allow the av programs to work, maybe we were doing something wrong?

Try using NOD32 (www.nod32.com) to scan for viruses.