After warning folks to be protected a few days ago, I made the bad
mistake of clicking on an attached ".exe" file from a source I thought
I knew.  But hey, my software did not warn me about it so it was likely
okay, right?

Over the next couple of days, the virus it brought in devastated me.
It gutted my Norton protection software, it changed settings in
Windows XP, it turned off every firewall.  It would not let me into
several web sites I needed.  It had put all the protection sites and
many others on a do-not-go-to list.

After finally getting to Symantec on the phone, since I could not get
there on the net any longer, I got their newest scan up and running
through my system.  It found two of the newest nasties.  Then Symantec
could walk me through removing them.  They said these two viruses only
came out Feb 27 and I got them on Mar 1.   Their names are "trojan.tooso"
and "trojan.tooso B".  I hear there is now an E version as well.  They
do more damage every six hours so it progressively gets worse.  They
also let in every spyware system there is.  In an hour online I got
over 40 spyware items.  I had to run "Ad aware" every day for a while.
It did not seem to have been gutted like Norton was.

If you have not updated your protection software, *do it now!*
That is emphatic; Robbie, it needs to be caps.

 [ I emphasized it with asterisks.  Phrases in all capitals mean
 [ shouting in Internet lingo, and we seldom shout around here.   ;-) 
 [ -- Robbie

If you don't have any protection software do that now as well.
I spent two days trying to find ways to update and install the latest
version of protection and going through procedures while on the phone
to India to get rid of everything the viruses did.

Yeah, its fine for you Mac-ies and you alternate browser folks to
gloat...  But I have been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and there
were just too many sites that would not come up under browsers other
than Internet Explorer.  I have never had a virus in all these years
until now.  I keep my software updated but I just fell into the crack
between the appearance of the virus and the protection people learning
about it and countering it with a new anti-virus release.

Let's face it -- Windows is the standard, Internet Explorer is the
standard, and I don't have time to learn a whole 'nother system.  I also
don't have time to chase down software and hardware that will work with
it, not to mention the added expense for non-standard devices and
softwares.

A word to the wise is sufficient.

D.L. Bullock    St. Louis
www.pianoworld.us