for the record, Windows Defender is NOT an antivirus tool, it's an anti spyware / adware tool

you still need a proper AV scanner to work alongside Defender...

dunno why everybody is bashing Symantec, i've had it for 5 years(enterprise version, but the scanning engine and dat's are identical to the regular version , it's just the interface and managability that are different...), i download a lot of crap, i will go on sites that are virus heavy, and have never had a single infection on either on my pc's, nor does it slow down to a crawl...

all this my AV is better then your AV is basically a load of bollocks in my opinion, just make sure you always have AV right after installing the PC, before connecting it to the (inter)network, and make sure you have daily checks for updates scheduled from the get go...and the leading brands , be that symantec, or Mcafee are no worse then the little brands like Trend AV, Kapersky and whatever else there is out there...

most problems with AV scanners not working, are basically user problems... misconfigurations ( disabling realtime scanning), not updating the dat's, turning it off, not verifying if it actually is running

What you need to fix this is a prog called HijackThis:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3155.html

If you dont want to worry about this again...
Firefox and Avast anti-virus.

both are FREE, both work Great.

occasionally I need IE, but thats for banking, not porn.

THis usually happens because the infected file masquerades as a "system file". The anti-virus/cleaner removes it, then windows auto-restore sees that a system file is missing, and re-places it with the file that's infected. Injenious and annoying.

You have to turn off system restore, clean in safe mode.

I think it's fixed.

I turned off the system restore, started in safe mode, and deleted the "perfect codec" directory. This directory had the programs that kept reloading after I turned them off.

Then I ran the noadware program that lendaddy recommended (the $37 one). The program shows you the offending registry entries and files it just doesn't delete them until you pay. Instead of paying, I used this incredible skill I have to match strings of characters :) and cleaned up the files and registry entries.

If the noadware program was free, I would have paypal'd them a few bucks for the effort, but they're not getting any money from me this time. ;)

Thanks for the help guys.

Sorry, but I can't help myself.

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iMoeuI0E6C4"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iMoeuI0E6C4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

All jibes aside...don't forget it was MS that bailed Apple out of bankruptcy when they were in of a downturn.

I couldn't care less about marketshare, as long as the winner plays fair, keeps control in the hands of the consumer(!), and keeps it's nose out of my comuters output sockets (know whuddimean).

Hardly. OS X is inherently more secure than Windows right out of the box.
It was basically written from scratch using a FreeBSD (Unix) kernal - there just aren't as many places for malware to hide in OS X as compared to Windows.

Plus the fact that you're not going to have a virus or trojan be able to self-install on a OS X machine.

An old, but relevant and interesting read on the subject

I have used Symantec products for a very long time, and trust it. That being said, the current versions are absolute memory hogs.

I also use "adaware" and "spybot S&D" to clean adware and spyware.

The latest versions of both Firefox and Internet Explorer are vulnerable to an unpatched flaw that allows hackers to snaffle users' login credentials via automated phishing attacks.