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I am an older guy from Michigan, unemployed now for almost 3 years. Previously I had worked as a Programmer/Analyst on Mainframe computers for over 25 years. I have been attending Macomb Community College for almost 3 years, through Michigan's "No Worker Left Behind" program, pursuing and Associates of Applied Science degree in Information Technology - Programming. Hopefully this will be my last semester; if I pass the two required courses I am taking, I will graduate in May.

I am here looking for help to remove a root kit, trojan, viruses and adware. Infection with a root kit started in Aug. 2011 - Norton tech support couldn't remove it, saying it was a new infection they were just starting to study. Since I had been out of work for 2 1/2 years at that point, I wasn't looking to spend money to remove the infection, using some other Virus removal service. The PC and application software was still working ok, but all software I installed to try and remove the infection would run for maybe 30 seconds and then was killed, along with the shortcut link. In September 2011 I created an Image Backup of the primary hard drive (infected C: drive and D: drive) on to the second hard drive in the PC, because every time I started the PC up, a Bios message appeared, saying that the C: drive was going to fail. I kept using the infected PC with the failing C: drive until the end of December 2011, when I finally paid to have all the infections removed. I bought a Western Digital 1TB USB drive to do another Image Backup to, now that the primary hard drive was clean, but as luck would have it, the drive failed before I ran the Image Backup. I have installed a new primary hard drive and restored the Image Backup from September 2011, which contained all the infections. So now I am here hoping to get the infections removed from the new primary hard drive!

Hello and to Bleeping Computer.

For your virus problem you should start a new topic here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/forum103.html

Be sure to check out the New User Orientation and the excellent Tutorials.