My brother is totally infected with many virusus which McAffee and another free program cannot seem to clear, I told him about Avast and have copied the download “setupeng” to a cdr. He cannot get on the internet so will try to install from this disk. Are there any suggestions when trying this? He is running XP on an HP computer.
Thanks, Don
Hi Don,
try the avast Cleaner first (see www.avast.com ), reboot in SafeMode (F8-Boot) and then install avast from CD
P.S.: Which viruses were these ?
In some cases it’d be better to format and reinstall 
Thanks for the quick reply, I downloaded the Cleaner to cd. Should I first bootup normally and then run the cleaner and then reboot in SafeMode and install the Avast?
He didn’t keep up with the MS updates so he was vunerable for anything, but he has updated all the patches so will see. I think he used the MS restore point and it looks like that may be where some of his problems are repeating from. Will be going over this Friday and see if I can get him back to normal. I know one of the problems is the “Net Pal” and it seems to be attached to Adaware so will delete that first.
Thanks again and will let you know how I do. Don
We worked on it for 5 hours and now have just what I think is a startup whatever. We tried to disable/delete and stop at startup Mcafee but it must have a mind of its own as it keeps popping up that a virus was detected but when run finds nothing except when trying to get on the internet all the ads start popping up and Mcafee states worm or virus c:\windows32\mshta.exe but won’t do anything about it. When we run the Avast it only finds c:\documents and settings\owner.…\newobject.1[1].hta and then Unable to scan: File is offline it is currently not available. The most irritating pop up is for something called "The Shield 2004, Hacker Smacker.next aisle.com, this is sure one program I would never buy if it is attached to something like this. So any more suggestions before we do the total restore, which I hope not to do.
Thanks again, Don
Hi,
download, install and update SPYBOT, CWSHREDDER, Ad-AWARE and Hijackthis from:
www.lurkhere.com & www.lavasoft.de (click english language button)
please start the PC in SafeMode (F8-Boot), and then
a) run a complete thorough Scan with avast & MCafee (on after the other!!); if possible set mcafee to also detect UNWANTED applications&adware.
Repair virus files, move trojan/worm/adware/spyware files to a new empty folder, or delete them
b) permently disable either mcAfee’s AV-Monitor, or avast’S ResidentShield → see program docu/help or website for info
Because having both active will result in Conflicts!!
c) scan and fix with Ad-Aware, Spybot and cwshredder (still in safeMode= TWICE
d) reboot normally
e) run onlinescanners from www.ravantivirus.com & www.trendmicro.com
for a final check
Didn’t get a chance to use your latest suggestions but I sure feel like a newbie, I guess my mind just was looking at the forest and not the trees or whatever that saying is. While laying in bed this morning pondering life it hit me that my brother (and me) did not have updated versions of the Adaware and Spybot. I downloaded Adaware for him and emailed it–he just called and said that it did the job and he is back to normal. Thank you for all the help but had I used my aged brain then I probably would have had this fixed a long time ago.
I’m not sure if you do but when helping people tell them to make sure they have the updated versions before trying to clean up.
Thanks again for all your help, Don