It seems that a rootkit has come to live in my computer, running XP SP2.
Avast! spotted it and supposedly removed it, but it’s still around. One of the give-aways is the “View hidden folders and files” option in the Tools - Folder options dialogues no longer functions. Also, clicking on one of the drive icons gets me a dialog asking “what to open this program with?”.
I’ve done three boot scans and with a trio of big hard drives in six partitions that takes from 11 to 12 hours when it discovers more-or-less the same things it removed the last time a boot scan was done or I ran Avast!.
This is driving me nuts as I cannot move any of the files I work on at home to work.
For what it’s worth, Kapersky - the utility used at work - is utterly worthless. Avast! spotted the thing, while Kapersky is completely blind to it. And yes, I got it from the office computers. Worse, NONE of our IT people at work seem to have the slightest idea as to what a rootkit is in the first place. I’m a damn car designer and I had to explain it to them!
If someone can give me some advice on how to kill this thing short of re-formatting all three of my hard drives, I’ll be eternally grateful.
bwob