Well, despite having the equivalent of 3 locks on the door and a resident engineer in the way of protective software, I just clicked on someone's weblog of all things, and this had the effect of popping up 61 explorer windows in a second, and until I got into the modem to disconnect, did this each time I clicked them off en masse.

Then the computer slowed, and the processes showed 100% cpu usage, instead of about 3-4% normal, this bug had hijacked sychost.exe to run at 98%, and though a restart cleared everything my startup now reports a hardware error that didn't go after a system restore.

Though everything else seems OK, now I've got to poke around uncharted areas to discover the bit of hardware that's affected and reinstall it (if I can). It just shows that whatever precautions you take, clever programs can hide all sorts within them and still get past every attempt to stop them. This is the first time XP has let in anything nasty, unlike 98, though of course I had little protection then and had to be wise after the event.

If anyone else has come across this little present let me know, especially if you know the hardware it targets and how to fix it.

An unfortunate thing to happen. Best to run Adaware, Spybot S&D and do a full system scan for viruses after updating these programs. Let us know how you get on.

Now for me sounding a bit like a broken record again If you are using IE, switch to a different browser. You won't be half, or even a third, or even a quarter as likely (if at all) to get into this sort of trouble.

Download Mozilla Firefox and get to know it. There's nothing to lose by trying it out. It won't stop IE from working and like most who take the step, you may end up preferring it.

I agree totally, TW. As a result of th scare stories I downloaded Opera from this website and I'm so impressed I paid to register it.

Well, as I said, partly on your earlier advice I'm already tooled up with all those, but I honestly had no idea different browsers had more security built in. That's news to me. I did wonder what this 'Mozilla' was, why it was any better than IE (like getting a posh TV, the programmes are still the same!) plus you have to pay to use it, and now I know.

The computer does it's thing now, but only after I have to press F1 on startup to bypass this unspecified hardware error. What's the point of an alert that tells you so little you can't pin down what to do next. I clicked every item in the device manager, and it said they were all working. Unless I stumble across a fix (as I often do) by accident, I could well be pressing F1 to boot up for the next 2 years, just because of a clever virus that could avoid the security.

So far (apart from being given dodgy software that crashed my whole system and needed an engineer to clear the total HDD) I've never paid a penny for either repairs or security (besides the Norton which came with the computer) and have benefitted by learning windows explorer from top to bottom, and where to download fixes, patches and free security. Now I could have to pay for my browser and premium rate blocking, and when I look at the vast amount I pay for internet access every month now, which just went up by 25% for the use and 50% for the phone line, added monthly costs would actually put me almost £10 over what I'd be paying for AOL broadband! I'm going to have to look for another job on the side at this rate!