Hello, I have a v. strange problem and hope that someone with expertise can advise me step by step!

One day, I was on the Internet with my laptop and had several IE browsers as is the case when I am online. I remember that I clicked on a popup by mistake and something started to download, and then I lost internet connectivity altogether! I've restarted and reconfigured my network settings. My spybot started going frantic with changes that were being made to the registry, which I kept on denying. Furthermore, my google toolbar was eliminated completely!
The loss of connectivity has nothing to do with my ISP since I connected another P.C and it works perfectly fine. It looks i have a virus or maybe my registry keys are corrupted?

1) Is the best way to fix this problem reinstall windows xp (prof version) from scratch?
a) if so, when backing up my files, is it advisable to use the backup tool in system tools in accessories or should i just copy on disks?
b) it seems a bit daunting that i have 12Gigs, which i just backed up on the local hard drive, but it would be advisable to transfer that out of my pc onto disks before i go on with the fresh start install, no?

2) please tell me if there is another way to deal with this problem

Thanks! Ciao.

Firstly welcome to the forum Technovice! :thumbs: Always great to see new members, even when its a computer problem. Let me go ahead and answer your questions, then reply back as soon as you can, we will be using different methods, so your thread location may change from time to time as we use different methods.

1) Is the best way to fix this problem reinstall windows xp (prof version) from scratch?

Yes there is, normally here we do a reformat and/or a fresh install as a last resort. We're first going to use a very well-known method

a) if so, when backing up my files, is it advisable to use the backup tool in system tools in accessories or should i just copy on disks?

It depends on if you have all of your CDs which you install from. I particually just copy and paste the files over, and re-install. More time, but easier on the system, and if you do it that way, you may be re-installing the spyware.

b) it seems a bit daunting that i have 12Gigs, which i just backed up on the local hard drive, but it would be advisable to transfer that out of my pc onto disks before i go on with the fresh start install, no?

I suggest you keep everything exactly as it is. Hopefully we can solve it with the first stab.

Please download HijackThis http://www.greyknight17.com/spy/HijackThis.exe - this program will help us determine if there are any spyware/malware on your computer. Create a folder at C:\HJT and move HijackThis.exe there. Double click on the program to run it.

1. If it gives you an intro screen, just choose 'Do a system scan and save a logfile'.
2. If you don't get the intro screen, just hit Scan and then click on Save log.
3. Get HijackThis Analyzer http://www.greyknight17.com/spy/KRC%...20Analyzer.zip and save it to the same folder as the hijackthis.log file. Run HijackThis Analyzer and type in 'y' if you agree. The 'result.txt' file will open up in Notepad. Copy the whole result.txt log and post it in the forum. You don't need to post the original hijackthis.log (unless we ask for it). Do not fix anything in HijackThis since they may be harmless.

After removing malware with HijackThis, AdawareSE, etc

run lspfix:

http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm

or winsock fix:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4372.html
these programs restore the original lsp provider sets in xp that often get damage by malware

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/winsock.htm