The worst for me was way back in May. It was just like any normal day, until I got on AIM. Minutes after signing in, I get a message from someone who I never talk to. The message being, “hey check out this!” with “this” being hyperlinked. My first instinct was to investigate the URL. So I do so and copy and paste the URL into my address bar. With the html after “.com” being terminated, I can browse the main website efficiently for any clues about what I could be clicking on. The website was about space and astronomy. Also one more thing, before clicking the link, I asked the user what the hyperlink was and got no response. Thus, I did the stupid thing. I clicked the link and hit “run.” Ugh, what a bad choice that was. Immediately my AIM went berserk. I started getting pop ups from other users asking questions such as “why do you want me to click it?” Even ZolaOnAol talked to me. From there I discovered that this was a mass mailing virus that would get spread quickly. One person on my buddy list had already clicked the link, she got the same thing as me, and as much as I tried to help her, she refused. She simply told me that her father would not allow her to download anything. Now back on topic, I had to exit AIM because it was getting ridiculous-just way too much going on in a short period. Shortly after that, I began to feel the first effects of SpyBot and SpywareGuard getting to this. One after another, “an important registry entry has been changed.” During that, Norton began popping up with virus alert messages. I was also suffering from random pop ups every so often.
Remember, this was happening very fast. Maybe like a few minutes after the infection, I ran Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Almost immediately after starting it, Ad-Aware found over 30 infections. While it continued to scan, I searched the web for more information. I found some really awesome and helpful links. I had this spyware called the “Elite Toolbar” and what a nasty thing that was. The Elite Toolbar was the source for all of the pop ups that I had been getting. Even while being disconnected from the internet, I continued to receive random pop ups. This time saying the page could not be displayed. Back to browsing the internet, I found this tool called the “Elite Toolbar Remover” or something like that. Whatever it was called, it sure was very helpful. It safely removed it, in safe mode I believe. While that may have been gone and things were much better, I still had the virus or at least small fragments of it. For a few days, I had this other nasty thing called “NewDotNet.” I had to delete it manually with HijackThis and from deep in the registry. After that mess was gone, the future looked much brighter for me. I even tempted myself to uninstall AIM, but I never did.
I also tried System Restore, but unfortunately the virus had corrupted it.
Now it’s like what, over six months later? Well it happened again today. I have another annoying thing that keeps popping up whenever I open Internet Explorer. Winfixer is the name, and death currently isn’t the game.
Here are a few images of the remnants of the virus in my Norton Protected Recycle Bin, taken weeks after the event.
Those files would never disappear.
) and when the computer restarted, there were programs I had not installed on the computer(Party Poker and some other kind of game). I deleted them... an hour later, they came back. Then when IE opened, popups everywhere. I had so many it locked up the computer twice, I got a pop-up blocker and got it under control(although I was still getting some) and then that evening about 6pm I was sitting here typing and I could see someone else typing(the address bar suddenly drops down with sites that start with the same letter as whoever is typing, but I couldn't actually see what they were doing), and then on Notepad it was typing stuff for me. 
It was gone after 10 minutes and didn't bother me again til the next evening, and once again, that encounter was brief, but really worrisome. The deleted programs continued to pop up on the desktop, within a half hour of deleting them, they were back again. This wasn't really a big problem(it didn't cause me to not be able to do things), it was just a major annoyance. Finally after about 2 weeks, everything was gone.
who AVG?