I have my "junk address", which is the one I use on web forums and anytime I order anything, or am required to give an email address (I also have my "real" one, that I give out to friends and people I regularly correspond with). The junk mail address used to be my hotmail address, but Microsoft decided that they weren't going to allow forwarding of Hotmail to Outlook Express anymore, so I dumped both Hotmail and OE. For years I had been getting one to two hundred junk mail messages a day to my hotmail account - filtering cut it to about 50 that I would see and have to delete, but that's still a pain in the rear! I started using my gmail address as my general junk address and Thunderbird as my mailer, and I have had maybe five spam messages in the past few months!! I haven't even set up any filters yet! I am still using my Hotmail address for one time only things that I really don't care about, so a lot of junk is still being directed there. But my gmail address has been out there, in heavy use, for months and I would think it would have attracted its share of spammers. It seems to have really good junk mail filtering built in. And those few that have gotten through have been caught by Thunderbird's built in junk filter. I think the only disadvantage with gmail is that I don't believe Outlook or Outlook Express will allow forwarding from it (Microsoft really hates Google). I haven't come across any disadvantages with Thunderbird - I'm not familiar with Outlook, only Outlook Express, but Thunderbird is 1000 times better than OE. I wasn't really trying to solve the spam problem when I switched - I had been fed up with OE for a long time and the bit with Hotmail not forwarding anymore pushed me over the edge. But changing to my current setup solved the spam problem as well, so I'm twice as happy :-) BP

Thanks Owbist. I have Norton 2007 and below are what I assume were installed, according to Belarc. I keep the definitions up to date- I'm not sure it is done automatically like it was with Norton 2004. It seems to check incoming email because once in a while a notice will let me know that something was deleted because it had a virus. A full scan is done once a week and I occasionally scan individual things that might be suspect. So far, the weekly scan has caught a tracking cookie or two. I also use ad-aware. I will do the online scans and see what they come up with. One thing I don't understand is why the files showed up in the recycle bin in the first place. Something must have told them to go there. After I do some investigating, I will let you know what happens. Thanks, again. Microsoft - Works 7.0 69406-OEM-0400003-00000 (Key: TM66R-2Q86K-HXPBD-CQ9TR-9WTQY)e Symantec Corporation - AppCore 1 Symantec Corporation - AV 1 Symantec Corp - Internet Worm Protection 1 Symantec Corporation - Norton AntiVirus 1 Symantec Corporation - Norton Protection Center 1 Symantec Corp - Symantec 1 Symantec Corporation - Symantec Real Time Storage Protection Component 1 Symantec Corporation - SymNet 1

Roselvr, it is interesting that you are so thorough. I often try to email people privately if I think things have been resolved, and that others don't have the same issue. We did take our computer to Circuit City. The Mother Board was dead. Since it was an E Machine, they said that many people only get about 4 years out of an E Machine. We bought the HP computer, and they copied my pictures onto the new computer. My husband disliked the old machine the most because we could not use a CD for pictures, but had to put in that little thing. According to the Techs at Circuit City, there was no evidence of a Virus or anything else harming the computer. I am happy with the new one since it has a larger screen. We did purchase a printer scanner since that is very important to me. Our biggest problem is that our old Router doesn't like Vista, so even though we paid Circuit City to "fix up" the computer so we would just have to plug it in, we now must buy a new router. My computer here at school has XP, and I hope I won't have troubles going back and forth with information. Even if I bought XP, the school would probably upgrade and there would still be a difference. We had them put in Norton's Security with anti virus and anti spy. We had odd things happening to the old computer probably because it was going out. I do appreciate all of the responses I have received from everyone. I am also glad that roselvr brought to my attention the fact that I haven't returned on some questions. Sometimes when it goes to your own computer, and you read the responses, it seems excessive to write back and thank everyone. I will try to be more careful because I am very appreciative, and even if I disagree with a response, I appreciate the time the person has take to respond. The man said he liked the new Norton's and that he also had trouble with them a few years ago. We'll see. Both of them warned me about free programs like Spyware Blaster. They said that in some of those pages that I would not have read, that I agree to allow them to give or sell some of my information to third parties. Frankly I have'nt a clue what I did when I signed up for it. He said I should be very suspicious when I use free programs - not free trials, but free programs. Sammy

Try ad-aware. If it can't clean the virus because it's running, it will clean it on the next startup.