Paranoia setting in?

After spent the last 2 weeks attempting to clean up a laptop (thread here ) which I eventually solved by formatting the hard drive (BTW laptop was actually IBM not Toshiba - no idea how I managed to get that wrong) I seem to have run into problems with my PC.

PB 2GHz Celeron, 512Mb RAM, WinXP, c - 60Gb, D - 80Gb, CD-R, DVD-R, DSL, NIS2004, MS antispyware

I've had a tendency over the years to install/buy software designed to fix perceived or actual problems that I've had, fix the problem and then forget about the apps being on the machine so that when a new or similar problem occurs months or years later I install/buy yet more software. So I have Xoftspy, PC BugDoctor, Registry Repair Pro and Clean Up Pro and maybe more installed.

During the above mention fix attempts I also downloaded a few other applications that were on a limited trial basis to evaluate (and yes, if I thought they were doing a good job I'd probably have bought them too), and then all the applications needed to run the checks given on this site.

My "paranoia" stems from the use of a memory optimizer that seemed to be doing a decent job until I watched what it was doing whilst I was burning cds with Nero, in effect it disabled Norton firewall by cutting the memory allocated by around 60%. I rebooted then removed the trial software then ran all the advised checks except Trend housecall, it wouldn't run in either IE or Netscape, in normal mode or safe mode so I ran the FSecure online check instead.

Apart from a few cookies nothing untoward was reported in the checks, I then ran Xoftspy which found W32.Xabot.Worm which I had it remove, ran HJT and the log looked okay to my untrained eye, in that most entries I recognized and after checking out the few that I didn't recognize felt assured that they belonged there.

I've also reinstalled NIS2004, fully updated and run the AV - clean.

This was all done yesterday, this morning I was browsing My Documents and spotted a folder that I certainly hadn't created 2 days ago "New Web" which contained a couple more folders, several HTML pages (blank_page_1, blank_page_2) and to my surprise a file called thumb.db was created and appeared whilst I was examining the folders.

Clearly something is wrong! I didn't open any of the files, or delete them as I'd like to see if anything else appears whilst my partner is copying CDs to atrac format and then making herself atrac cds for her new car CD player (which I have to install later).

Any thoughts/views?

Just to make my life even more interesting I'm using my 2nd PC at the moment and have found to my dismay that it has the about:blank hijack and probably much, much more but I'll attempt to deal with this after I work out what's happening with my main machine.

 

Okay, sorry for being annoying with this, I know I tend to over-explain things.

One thing I have to say in my defence is that there are 4 machines in the extended family and everyone wanting theirs working properly 10 minutes ago and only one of me with any idea of how to go about fixing them . . . also whilst one is undergoing a series of scans there is plenty of time free to be doing something to one or more of the others.

So laptop - fixed
main PC - probably clean but perhaps needing a little more hardware upgrading, I'll see what I can do

2nd PC - the only one that I am working on with a view to removing spyware (so forget the rest) yesterday I ran the full advised clean up operation

Spybot fixed 111/114 rebooted found and fixed 1
Ad-aware 604
(ran both after installation/ update)

(no network supported safe mode)
Trend Housecall found and fixed 2 problems
Norton security check 52
(safe mode)
stinger 0
ad-aware 0
spybot 2
nothing else found by the rest

ran HJT - some clear things to remove (some have been there for a very long time - maybe 5 years)

away for a week now so will return to the clean up operation on my return, I will clear the known problems via HJT and if I'm happy with it then I will not bother anyone here again.