Perform the restore. When you restart..........

You can "disable" auto updates by;

Start, run, type in Services.msc.

Right click on Automatic Updates. Click STOP. When it's stopped, click Properties. Under "Path to executable", in the drop down box, click Disabled. Click OK, close the window and restart.

From then on you can do manual updates.

I would download/install IE8.

Thanks Dan, I'll do this tonight. This is making sense, we did have IE8 before the infection.

IE8;

Internet Explorer 8: Worldwide sites

Dan, I'm speaking to you from IE8! Thank you for sending the IE8 link. When I shut off the autoupdate it was very slow and would not fully load pages. I had to turn it back on. I tried downloading from windows but it would not allow me to only select IE8. It kept adding the rest to the downloads. This seemed to work flawlessly.

I'm going to try do the rest of the updates over the next few days, to keep track of any problems.
Thanks again, now the kids can get back online to do their homework.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Noel

"When I shut off the autoupdate it was very slow and would not fully load pages. I had to turn it back on. I tried downloading from windows but it would not allow me to only select IE8."

Hmmm. Never seen this behaviour before.

(With Auto-Upates still enabled if you like) I'd run some cleanup tools on the machine.

A good (free) "cleaner" for removing junk from your system is CCleaner. It also performs a "clean-up" pass on the registry.

CCleaner - Download
(Click on Download from FileHippo......, in the PayPal box)

When the next window opens, click "Download Latest Version" on the right of the page.

Alternate Download;
|MG| CCleaner Slim 2.25.1025 Download

Once you download and install it, open the program then click on (left hand side) OPTIONS, then COOKIES. Any cookies you want to save (trusted sites, places you have usernames/passwords), highlight them in the left column, then (using the directional arrows between the panes), move them to the right hand column under "Cookies to keep".

Still under Options, click on Advanced. Remove the check mark from the box for "Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than 48 hours".

Leave all other settings at the default.

Then click on Cleaner (on the top left). When that window opens, click on Run Cleaner (bottom right of the window.)

When it finishes, close CCleaner, and restart your machine. (Some files will not be deleted until a restart is performed.)

I do not advocate running CCleaner on each boot. I run it once or twice a week.


RegSeeker
Open it, click on Clean The Registry, then OK.

Once it's finished, along the bottom of the screen, click on Select, choose "Select All". Then click on Action, then "Delete selected items".

All deleted items will be backed up, just click OK for the default backup filenames/locations.

Close the program and restart the machine.

NOTE: This is a powerful tool. It has many other settings/tools/tweaks. Use more than what is mentioned above at your own volition/risk.

Dan, so far so good. I usually use ccleaner pretty often. I down loaded the new version and ran it this time like you suggested. I tried the Regseeker, it was a little confusing, so I did not run it. I've completed all critical windows updates except sp3. I manually did them about ten at a time, with an occasional restore point. Everything is working well right now. All shortcuts, links, favorites and start menu commands are responding they way they should. I set autoupdates to 'notify but do not download'. I may try sp3 in a couple days, what do you think?

Once again thank you for your help.

Give RegSeeker another try. Don't let the warning scare you. It's there so people know how powerful the tool is. It's quite simple to run really. I've been using it for around eight years. Never had a problem with it, just better/quicker machine running.

A progress bar will appear near the bottom, just below the "Select" and "Action" buttoms. It'll "hang" on 98% for a minute or three, then finish.

Set a new Restore Point just prior to the SP3 install.

Let us know how it goes.