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Re: Trojan horse
Right, just to clarify a few things,
Anti virus, this scans anything being downloaded to your computer for viruses. This can be in email or just normal file downloads. You should be updating your virus definitions weekly at least. If you are going to collect a lot of email it is good practice to do your AV first. It does not stop some trojans that come in via other means.
Firewall, This stops any unauthorised access either from the internet to your PC(Cracking, NOT HACKING) or from your PC out to the internet(Trojans/spyware). Whilst a correctly configured firewall will stop a trojan from 'phoning home' it will not remove one, this is a job for either your AV software or a specific removal tool. A good free tool is Zone Alarm although they will try and flog you their pay for version with lots of bells and whistles the free tool is perfectly adequate
Spyware, this is software placed on your computer generally without your knowledge that monitors your useage etc and send this data back to its owner. this can be used for marketing purposes etc
Malware, similar to spyware but tends to cause you more severe problems, sort of an invited virus. In order to remove spyware/malware you need another tool. unfortunately there isn't one tool that can deal with them all so you end up with two or three to get a clean scan . Have a look at Spybot, ad-aware for two options.
Back to Jelly-baby's problem. If you have a few different trojans then you are in the position of two choices, either choose to use system restore to a point before they infected you and risk losing a few things or do a complete system rebuild. If you need to back stuff up before you do this there are plenty of good tools that can help you do this even if your PC is so riddled it won't run properly. Let me know if you need to go down this route.
Ian
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