I think this got on my computer recently and is malicious. I don't know if it is all that is there but as of yesterday it started popping up on my symantec radar. I'm afirad to do anything that will make it worse. Symantec identifies it as a threat but can't clean or quarantine or delete it.

I went to my campus tech support department today and they cleaned up a lot of problems I didn't know I had, running long scans with ad-aware, and spy-sweeper. I ran spybot last night and did a looong symantec scan and it cleaned up a lot of problems, but this one persists.

I haven't seen any direclty impaired functionality, but i don't want it to do somehting bad that i don't realize. As of last night (when it came to a head) the worst problem i had was that periodically firefox would open a window with an advertisement on it.

anyhow, i haven't gone through the hijackthis pre-work as discussed at the top of the thread yet because i'm not sure that that is appropriate, so i'd be happy to answer more questions to do what i have to do to make sure everything is ok.

I'm on Windows XP SP2, on a Dell Inspiron 8600. This was what popped up with the notification:

Scan type: Auto-Protect Scan
Event: Threat Found!
Threat: Downloader
File: C:\WINDOWS\mrofinu77.exe
Location: C:\WINDOWS
Computer: D63B2B6W
User: SYSTEM
Action taken: Clean failed : Quarantine failed : Access denied
Date found: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 8:09:08 PM

I can post longer logs if requested (virus scan last night, and the spysweep, ad-aware, and spybot scans.)

Ahh!

Hi have you done the prework this is the standard dril here http://www.pchelpforum.com/hijackthi...a-prework.html then post back you logs and the security staff will sort it out there excellent!

Thanks, i will get on that. I wanted to make sure that was the thing to do before going at it on my own because some of the steps looked concerning (deleting system restore poitns, mainly.) especially to a pc novice on these things such as myself.

I may be slow as I will be away for a little under a week, but will have my computer powered off and disconnected in the meantime.

If you follow the steps and post back to logs we will fix your PC if it's in a week it won't matter post it under here HiJackThis! Logs - PC Help Forum - Free PC Help we will help you I would hate to count how many PC get fixed using this method