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Has anyone else heard of this? Has anyone else been affected by this?

It starts as spyware and then acts like a virus resetting your registries. It is icky and hard to remove. Once it is removed it takes even longer for a non-tech person to fix the damage. I had to restore my puter back to August just to be able to have internet access.

Props for having a valid backup image, old as it may have been.

I haven't heard of this. Do SpyBot and/or AdAware already catch it?

Adaware caught it, but by the time I realized what I was looking at the damage had been done. Spybot didn't recognize it at all. I still need to reinstall a few things (like my printer) and my dsl icon won't work, so I may have to play with that a bit, but at least I can get online. David blamed me installing DSL on his inability to get online (even though he doesn't do anything and spends maybe 10 mins on the puter a week). I kept trying to explain what the problem was, but he didn't get it.