Question About Deleting Files

Just wondering if it's possible that a CWS variant (or any other nasty sort of thing) could create phony modified and/or created dates. Looking through my WINNT and System32 folders, there's a bunch of seriously shady looking executables and DLLs. The reason I ask is that I'm certain that at least one point (before I ran through the proper steps) the about:blank hijack was pointing to a DLL with a modified/creation date a week or two older than when the problem came up. Then again, who knows how long some of this stuff had been hiding.
Do you suppose zipping questionable files is a way to go? I figure that way they can't do any harm where they're at, and if I accidentally delete a legitimate file, I can restore it easily enough.
Thanks,
Chris

 

Well, I guess I've had some of this spyware for a little longer than I thought. At least no problems rebooting after zipping/deleting 170 or so various exes and dlls.