If you have a third party email unitlty (Thunderbird, etc.), most of these have a "trash box". When you delete an email from either the "In Box" or "Sent Box" it goes to the trash box. To complete a deletion, go to the trash box and delete. Items deleted from the trash box are gone. This is a neat feature. For example, if you deleted a message while reading it in the "In Box" and then later wanted to retrieve it. you can. Merely move to the trash box, select the message and "Move" it to another box.

I can not agree with the McAfee praise I had horrible problems with it. Kaspersky is an excellent pay for AV program. I would never allow anyone on my pc to have admin rights especially kids they should all have very limited accounts and no access to the admin account that would stop a lot of the problems. I do all my bill paying online through my bank, I do it on my linux computer. I have not had any problems. Choosing strong passwords is essential also for any important sites and changing them from time to time is a good practice. Many banks are now considering offering free linux live cd's to their customers to do their online banking, when you put the linux live cd into the computer and boot from it you have access to firefox browser and can go online and do your banking while on the cd so that when you are done and you eject the cd and reboot to your regular windows all traces of what you did are gone. Very much like sandboxing. Here are some recent articles about this. I really urge people to pick up a linux live cd to have on hand they can be used for a lot of stuff, most all linux magazines you find in bookstores will have a free cd of some flavor of linux in it and you can of course burn one free online or order them for free. Can Ubuntu save online banking? Avoid Windows Malware: Bank on a Live CD E-Banking on a Locked Down (Non-Microsoft) PC

That sounds like Virut virus lets hope not though..... Unfortunately, the virus infects every .exe and .scr (actually an executable) file on your system, and when you scan with a virus scanner, it will normally delete it as uncleanable. Eventually you end up loosing more and more files. The only viable alternative is to format the system. You will need to backup your important files before a format and reinstall, but you can not backup any .exe or .scr files, because they are infected. Good luck...

If you want to practice retrieving information from your hard drive try Scavenger. Your allowed to retrieve pictures for free. (Demo Download) To retrieve files you will have to pay for a license. You won't be allowed to retrieve to your existing hard drive. That's to keep you from overwriting, for your protection. You can retrieve to an exterior hard drive, Sandisk, Flash drive and probably to a second hard drive, not sure. After you have selected the pictures your after and sent to the exterior hard drive or (whatever your using) You can than move the pictures to your computers hard drive. It's been awhile for me. Look for this. (For direct installation on a hard drive: File Scavenger® Version 3 (773 KB - June 07, 2007)) Scavenger After you download it's best to put it on a CD. That way you can use it to recover without overwriting files you need to recover. When you put it into your tray it's ready to use. Click on the header Type to group all your JPEG pictures. Either stop or wait for the search to finish for clicking Type to work best. Trial and Error to learn to use it.