I have some "swamp lily" type crinum (the pink flowered kind)that need a good home. I think that you might need to plant it in a protected area in NC, but it grows like a weed in my yard.

I assume you don't know what you're infected with. I did some googling using the info you posted and found 66.230.138.44/dclick.php = search-daily.com = Troj/Clicker-E From what I'm reading at some sites it may take some work - spywareBlaster, spybot-search and destroy. You can find links to these programs here Going to here, it may not be that involved. Clicking on recovery tells how to remove it. There's a really good post here and here both giving general directions on how to remove stuff like this. Hackmann from MPC is very good. I suggest you run some of the programs listed in those posts, that also clean. It's the easiest way to get running again. Depending on what else it finds, you may have to make a decision on whether to clean (manually removing registry keys) or backing up, then reformatting. I had a neighbors system that had over 20 pieces, decided that i could reformat in less time than cleaning.

Thanks for the info. I am in no way stupid, but my skills are heavily in language and anything related to math can easily sandbag me. I am afraid of making my computer problems worse if I try to fix them, because that is exactly what has happened in the past. I don't open suspicious files but I still get an occasional worm or virus. I live in the country, precisely, among many Mennonite farmers, and technology has not found its way very deeply into this area. Getting technical help out here from Syracuse is expensive. MY ISP, TDS, whom I hate because I believe they gravitate toward underserved areas and then exploit their customers, offers an expensive monthly "service" to keep my computer fast and clean, but it is expensive and I am suspicious od TDS. I am fortunate that I can get DSL because many of the people out here are still stuck with dialup service. Few dare to try satellite service and I have heard nothing good about it. As I said, I research anything and everything that crosses my mind or which I want to buy and I am certain I am encouraging problems that way. I will ask the guru who is eventually coming about imaging. I have Asperger Syndrome and don't deal well with change and that is why I cling to MS products--I got started on them with an ISP employee sitting next to me, who set them up, and instructed me in their use. I have tried different browsers and mail programs in the past but the differences in them were extremely annoying. Another thing--I don't "intuit" very easily and things that seem obvious to others never dawn on me. I can and do learn but I need to find a tutor who can figure out how to explain things so I can grasp them. Still, I have compelted two MS degrees and theses with high honors since computers took over the libraries.

There's a line between prudence and paranoia and I think some folks tend towards the latter. Everything that goes wrong with a computer, isn't the result of malware and viruses. There's a healthy dose of old fashioned user error in the mix and quite frankly some of these "help" programs cause more problems than they solve. It was a month or so back where we had a user, with one of these "help" programs who got a little overzealous editing the registry with predictably disastrous results. I don't know that Linux is the answer for the average user. It, unfortunately, seems to add a layer of complexity without a good technical support structure. There are also a fair number of users who use their computers for work and their employers require or support only certain applications and even operating systems. If the boss wants your spreadsheet in Excel, Linux isn't much help. Oh sure, you can run a Windows virtual machine inside of Linux but now you need two operating systems. I played with Linux back in my anti-Microsoft days but once I discovered NT, most of my problems went away.