He ended up using Microsoft’s FAQ on how to stop it shutting down using the command prompt box and that worked for him - sounded reasonably confident yesterday but still not using a firewall and got the firewall lecture from me by which time he was looking rather more dismayed! Yes he does have patient data so I have explained that he’ll need to reinstall because machine’s security has been compromised.

Oh well he’s running Spybot and not swapping disks with the puters at work so the problem is not what it might have been.

I said I would help with the virus and getting machine set up with firewall and scanned with Avast, Spybot and Ad aware till it’s clean as it can be then he’ll have to seek professional help for getting it reinstalled, probably from the manufacturer if it’s still under guarantee. I gave him a Cd-R with the Avast free virus removal tool and Microsoft patches on it and he has printouts of how to turn on the Microsoft firewall till he can download something more sensible, how to switch off System Restore, how to boot into Safe mode and how to backup the registry - and I also printed off the information you’ve given me here and the information at the top of the forum listings about how to make a puter as secure as possible for going online. Don’t know if he’s actually reading it all but he can’t say he doesn’t know where to get it now:) and I think I’ve about done as much as I can, it’s up to him now.

Remember I’ve never actually seen this laptop or what it’s doing. But I think he’ll be more careful in future.

Thanks everyone!