I have now installed and ran ad aware, spywareblaster and spybot search and destroy. My system is running at a cripplingly slow pace and is no better.

In answer to your question, yes I did have an up to date avast version. It was updated on 12/12/04.

I tried to delete the file which was the root of all my troubles love_04.scr and then ran the other malware removal progs in the order above. They found quite a few critical files and I have quaranteened all of these.

The executable file winit.exe that appeared with my virus has gone but my system still snails along. The mouse curser moves freely for some seconds, then freezes as if performing some memory intensive operation, then moves again. peforming any operation is s l o w.

Unsure where to go from here.

Thanks for your replies