The Dell tech assured me the "infections" were gone and that  the added RAM 
would do the trick, but I do trust your research.  I've already bought the 
extra 4 Gigs of RAM, so I guess I'll go ahead and install it and see if the 
computer comes up to specs again.  If not, we also bought a MAXTOR 700+ Gig 
removable storage device.  So, now that begs the question that, if I do 
decide to reformat the hard drive, can I first safely clone the C: drive or 
copy it out to the removable storage without also bringing over whatever is 
currently slowing my  computer to glacial pace?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Penlington" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: [PCSOFT] Internet Explorer pop-ups.


> Michael wrote:
>>a horribly =
>>sluggish system to the point of being intolerable.  We're going to add RAM 
>>=
>>(from 1 G to 4) and see if that speeds things  up. >>
>
>
> That's like putting the ambulance at the foot of the cliff. Band-aid 
> solutions like adding RAM won't fix existing problems, and most likely 
> won't improve anything. Much better in the long run to fix the problem, 
> even if the fix is as drastic as a reformat, rather than try to patch it 
> over.
>
> Of course, if you've cloned your hard drive, then that's the quick and 
> easy solution to any of these sorts of problems---but presumably you do 
> not have that solution available to you.
>
> Save your money and reformat your hard drive. In many cases with that 
> particular infestation, reports from many readers in several forums 
> indicate that there's no effective alternative. As you delete the bad 
> files they simply regenerate themselves with random names, so it's almost 
> impossible to track them down. You'll end up spending many fruitless hours 
> chasing your tail, all to little avail.
>
> In 3 cases I've seen of this family of malware (I don't think Antivirus 
> 2009 is properly classified as a trojan) the only solution I found to work 
> completely was to run a newly-updated Malwarebytes from a BartPE boot 
> disk. That seemed to work quickly and efficiently. The update must be done 
> on another computer.
>
> I'm not sure whether Malwarebytes would work if the nasty has already been 
> partly removed, but it's worth trying---your Dell tech would doubtless 
> have a boot disk from which to run it. (Or maybe he's already been down 
> that road).
>
> Don Penlington
>
>      "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
>        programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column.
>                       http://freepctech.com/rode
>
>
>
>
> E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (6.0.0.386)
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E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (6.0.0.386)
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