winupdate went undetected, removed manually, but still lingers.

That's the short of it, right there in the subject. Winupdate.exe found its way onto my computer. It's mostly new, and had no problems until very recently- then it started having virtual memory errors, and not turning off after shutting down WindowsXP (it would just linger on the desktop background, with the cursor active, but no icons or taskbar). I did a manual shut-off, rebooted, and suddenly Firefox wouldn't open, either. I used Internet Explorer to download a whole host of anti-virus stuff- AVG, Spybot, Adaware, the 15-day trial of Norton 360, Hijack This, a registry-fixer program, and none of them found anything out of the ordinary, except a few tracking cookies. I downloaded a startup management program, and found that winupdate.exe- the one affiliated with the "DRam prosessor(sic)" was running, and when I tried to close/kill it, it just restarted instantly.

Eventually I found the entries by searching manually in my registry, and deleted them. The startup program closed them, and they stayed closed, and no longer appear on the list, even after a number of reboots.

Now, however, I'm still having virtual memory problems, and Windows still fails to shut down properly. Firefox didn't start working again until I uninstalled it, reinstalled it, and opened it for the first time in Firefox's safe mode. It's since working properly again.

I'm troubled now because I have no idea if the problem is really fixed, or even entirely if that's what the problem truly was. Since none of the anti-virus or anti-spyware programs I installed found anything, I'm suspicious that perhaps the problem could still exist and they're just failing to detect it again.

To be fair, I hadn't installed Norton or Hijack This before I deleted the registry keys affiliated with winupdate.exe, but Spybot, Adaware, and AVG all come up empty, and continue to. But since the computer's not back to its old self again yet, I don't know how to figure out if there's still a problem.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

--d