[Nicihntm]

Thats one thing I actually didnt check- whether a full format and reinstall would clean out everything- I `think' I still have the hdd lying around, when I unpack I'll see if I have and what happens (MBam and combofix seemed to clean it out on xp, but as it was only a 10gb hdd, I wasnt too concerned about playing about with it)- I was just interested to see what it did

A major contributing factor to continued spread of lots of this malware is Windows XP. It was around for so long that it became "easy" for the evildoers to infect and takeover. Windows XP still accounts for 30% of systems out there. In September 2010 it was still more than 50%. So currently 30% of machines on line are using an operating system that is 11 years old. Yes, it's comfortable, but it's old and insecure and was never designed for the sort of internet use that exploded after it was released. Vista and Windows 7 are both much better systems but acceptance of change has taken a long time - Vista was released in 2007 and that is 5 years ago. This graph demonstrates why Windows XP is still such a problem - it is the % of "reported" infected computers.