I am getting a thing called WINFIXER appearing on my computer. It tells me I have faults and invites me to download a checker. Telling it to go away deosn't seem to help and after minutes I finally manage to shut it down <it is persistent and a da--mn nuisance, gets in way of things and slows the computer down, and causes pages to vanish so I would like to rid it for good . Can someone help me with this ? ( PS .I know I have my faults but I didn't know computers had got so good they could cure mine for me ! LOL)

I didn't use that prog after all. It woke me up and I went to search "removal of winfixer" and discovered that it is an old difficult adversary to take on ,and the probs it causes are real. I used a couple of the free demo progs and found files it was probably hiding in. But I couldn't use them to get rid of it as they wouldn't allow me to. I downloaded microsoft anti spyware and ran that , but then I also ran Norton Antivirus after and it picked up some stuff called Vundo ,which I believe is something to do with winfixer. Anyway I am not sure what hapened but winfixer has gone. I just wonder if having brought out those suspect files, it woke Norton up to them. Any way it locked them out in quarantine and I have been trouble free since. It just took a whole day to fix it. For a reputable (?) company to resort to junk like that is a disgrace? I feel like sending them a bill for my time at my professional rate of £86 an hour! I would argue that what they have done is illegal since it is in effect a virus. Thanks a lot Sarah. Great stuff.

if you are running XP, get microsofts antispyware beta program (free download) it gets many of these little nastys.

also trya search for 'hosts.txt' in google, this little file can prevent many of these things ever landing with you. and they even email the updates. stops loads of ads as well

I don't mean to be abrupt, but I'm keeping this brief.

1, go here
2, read the appropriate stickies (ie, the HJT stuff mainly)- take particular note of the advice given by the techies on the subject of Norton - it's useless.
3, Start a new thread with a descriptive title and post a HJT log in the manner stated in the appropriate sticky
4, wait for a little advice, and then follow it to the letter
5, There is no 5 - your problem should be fixed.