By “effective” I meant would it work to remove a worm infestation as well as malware (I don’t actually know the difference between the two, so I don’t know why it would be any different, thus my question).

I’ve scanned three different drives, all three drives have had to have files deleted that avast is telling me are infected with this worm. The alert avast popped up told me it had just blocked the threat. Semantics? :-\

Yes, one machine had an external drive attached to it which was being used as a backup drive. I have removed that drive from the network and scanned it. Fortunately, it only had three infected files and they were not any of the 2,010 files that had to be deleted from the first machine I scanned. Beyond that, no sticks or other external devices. I don’t think the external drive was the source of the infection though. I can’t know of course, but I suspect it was my own stupidity clicking a link I normally would have known better than clicking… :-[

And, apologies for the gender confusion, I’m a she. Just got home from out of town. I’ll check the links you’ve provided in the morning and send reports out. Thanks for the help.