I assume it has an ethernet port? Plug it in and forget the wireless. Then boot into safe mode by pressing F8 at boot and choose Safe Mode with Networking. Then go to trend micro's site and use housecall.

hmm, maybe download an AV (like AVG and it's free) and let it do it's thing. couldn't hurt at this point.

Yeah, I think I'll just take it in...LOL...you guys are highly overestimating my skill level.

The virus will only to be effective if the drive is an active partition and used by the system...  if the virus is on a drive that the system does not use then the virus is immobile...

With that being said… my suggestion would to do the following:

1)      Connect a USB drive or any other form of external drive to the laptop

2)      Copy the files you want to keep

3)      Connect the drive you used to a system you know is virus free and proceed with a virus scan (if you do not have a another computer then proceed to step #4 and then do step #3 after step #4 on the newly cleaned laptop.

4)      Wipe the laptop and reinstall the operating system and update and install and anti-virus program and continue on with life.

Shelby had it right

Wahine,

         If you are afraid of a virus getting on that flash drive here is a very good anti-virus for the flash drive.

It is free and it will scan any file you put on the flash drive as you try to put them on it. It is very good and highly recommended.

http://www.sizzledcore.com/2008/07/29/mx-one-free-usb-flash-drive-antivirus/

Very cool.  Thank you.  I will try that.

I agree with Shelby gt,,, what have you got to lose. Put it on a flash drive and make sure your new install has an up to date antivirus running.

Brandie,

It's unlikely a virus will have infected your photos.  Copy them to a disk, scrub the computer, and scan them when you're sure you're clean.  Or buy a Mac, but I bet that's cost prohibitive.

I was a PC guy for many many years.  I knew how to tweak every aspect of Windows, but I gotta say, since I bought my Mac, life has been a lot simpler.

He said it not me...

This is not the first time I've gotten the MAC suggestion, LOL.  Too late now though. 

So Tex, what have we learned today? Always keep back ups of important files suck as photos on a seperate drive or disk.

I think I have about 3 back ups of all my photos and 2 of my music.

I just downloaded that to take a look-see

at 1.3m everything slowed down, windows became unresponsive and then trendmicro popped up a warning about a threat on my c drive and started a full scan

download then finished at 1.4m - download window would close (not responding), firefox would minimize/close (not responding) other apps (not responding)

tried to delete the mxone.exe - access denied

tried to drag the mxone.exe over to recycle - access denied

unlocker deleted it

Tmicro is at 60% scanned, 2 possibles - won't know if it actually anything or tracking cookies until later

coulda been a false positive...

okay...

This was not my laptop.  I backed my stuff up on my laptop.  This is one DH bought in Iraq.

Lesson not learned.  So HA.

I held off on responding after folks started posting how-tos, since you'd previously indicated you weren't confident about ensuring your system was clear.

TW: You're still at square one.  If you're not comfortable clearing the system prior to backing up, I stand by my original advice.  It is probably better to learn about how to clear a virus and prevent data loss when you are not currently at-risk.

Also, that post and link to the suspect U3/flash drive AV software should be removed.  When dealing with such things, it's 'guilty until proven innocent' and I didn't trust that software - even before Bichur posted about it.

As a final comment from me, while I agree image files themselves aren't very high risk for transferring virus and other malware, I think people forget that virus can - and regularly do - intercept operating system calls, especially those having to do with the file and memory subsystems, since this is how virus (aside from email/browser trojans) hijack your system to propogate themselves.  In other words, when you do a file copy/move/delete on an infected system you cannot trust that the virus isn't doing other things when you run those commands.  I really can't believe some of the advice given in this topic, though I suppose it is easier to give such advice when it's not your own data at risk.  Good luck, TW.