Virus (or Trojan?) Attack

I have to report that my main "Radio PC" is down having contracted something nasty yesterday.

Basically it all started when I discovered that the DVD/RW on my main PC seemed to be duff, and so I tried to burn a DVD on my Radio PC which is a Dell Dimension 3100 running Windows XP Home Edition.

That was a failure, as it appeared that the DVD/RW in the Dell was also u/s, and after doing some research on the web, I tried to download a new driver for it.

It seems that "driver sites" are now as bad as "keygen" sites used to be at harbouring nasty things, and to cut a long story short I very soon had a crippled PC, and still have.

First it was a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) with a number of "Stop Codes" which I was unable to find a satisfactory explanation for.

I then "repaired" the Windows installation from the OEM CD which got it going again, but as soon as I had it fired up I noticed that Microsoft Security Essentials appeared to have been "nobbled" in that the real time scanning couldn't be enabled, and examination with TCPView revealed dozens of TCP connections opening up, at which point I quickly removed the network connection from the PC.

As of now I haven't been able to find the root cause - a deep scan with Security Essentials, followed by SpyBot Search and Destroy revealed nothing, but there is definitely something nasty in there, and it will have to be complete purge, reformat and reinstall from scratch, I'm afraid.

Web sites being hosted on that PC have been found alternative accommodation, and I now need to think about what I must rescue in the way of data (My HRD logbook is in there for one thing) before I "slash and burn" and start again.

Doesn't it make you sick!

Yours, grumpily