Customer calls saying that his computer stops working once windows starts & he thinks its because of spyware.

I think: Hmm, sound like a slight exaggeration. Malware will usually slow down your computer, or break something so it wont start at all.

But no, he was right… windows would start and run (albeit slowly), but once I click on the start button, the start menu would appear, then click on any item and then: nothing! The mouse cursor would still move on the screen, but no more screen updates. The HDD light indicates that something is still running.

I try ctrl-alt-del & run, but anything I ran would only partly start & then freeze.

I try safe mode: same thing!

I try Bart PE, but I don’t get very far…

I get somewhere by: starting in safe mode, start task mgr, select file -> run, then run the Ewido setup program from the CD (I had to remember the name of the setup .exe, as doing “browse” would lock up the PC), once Ewido was installed ( http://www.ewido.net), I could start the long and difficult task of removing a LOT of different Malware software.

What makes this even more amazing is that the PC was using dialup to connect to the internet!