Dear Sven, Toomas, William, Hugh, Lynn, and Neal.

Thank you all for your assistance in removing the hijacker. Although my
computer is working slower than usual, I think I removed the main problems.

It turns out that ALL the tools that you mentioned are necessary. No single
tool is capable of finding everything.

The main problem seems to have been the about:blank hijacker. Sven correctly
recommended Adware Away which did indeed remove that hijacker. This program
is very difficult to use, but it is the only one that can possibly remove
some of this malware. Don't use it unless all else fails.

A subsequent defrag revealed that two files could not be defragged, as well
as one directory - c:\Windows\System32.

That's an important directory. I'll see how it goes, and I suspect that it
may be the reason why my computer is so sluggish when loading programs. If I
can't handle it, then I may format c:\ after all.

I want to thank all of you again for your wise and insightful assistance. I
appreciate your efforts!

David Grossman

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