Busy times - this post has now been completed so if you haven't read the whole thing ... read it again

Yesterday was a wild and busy day.

Kt was still home sick from school.

I took her out to the playground first thing in the morning to get her out in the fresh air. She has been cooped up inside for most of the week and was starting to climb everything in sight.

After an hour in the playground she was worn out and I let her watch some tv while I headed off to get my 36 week blood test done and our weekly shopping.

The shops will be closed Sun and Mon for Anzac day so I wanted to get it out of the way early.

On my return home I unpacked the shopping and uni told me we had been infected by a virus on the computer.

It was called security tool and it pretends to be one of your own protective programs that has found a threat to your computer and asks you if you want to remove the problem program. When you click on remove program it actually loads itself onto your computer and offers to take itself off your computer if you pay a fee to get it removed.

Uni looked on the net to see if he could get another program to remove it, but all the ones he found also wanted you to pay a fee.

I tried running an avast scan ... which said everything was running normally.

Then while I was running windows defenders scans avast recognized a trojan and I quaranteened it. Windows defender found something as well ... called downloader and I followed its prompts and removed it.

There was some mention that windows live care or microsoft security essentials were other programs that could be used to remove spyware and malware.

I thought the problem was solved, but security tool remained on uni's screen.

I turned the computer on and off and it was still there.

I drove uni to adams house for the night, with poor kt coughing and spluttering all the way.

When we got back I started cooking dinner and we did showers and eating and bedtime.

I did some research on my laptop and discovered that windows live care no longer existed but microsoft security essentials could be used instead and it seemed to be familiar with security tool.

to be continued... time for me to read a bedtime story now ....

Ok well the next day I went back to the computer and logged on as uni and security tool was doing pop ups and generally being uncooperative.

I tried to download microsoft security essentials but it would not load ... seems security tool was blocking it.

I logged out of uni's screen and logged in again as kt ... and was thrilled to see that security tool was no where to be seen on her screen ... so I attempted to access and download microsoft security essentials and it worked.

When I ran a full scan using microsoft security essentials it located security tool in several locations including the recycle bin (where both uni and I had tried to put it) and the exact location on the computer where it was (something like C/program data/93xxxxxxxxxx). It also successfully removed it which was wonderful!!!

It avoided detection on quick scans but thorough scans worked.

Thank you to everyone for suggestions of other places to look for programs to remove malware ... I will keep the details for future reference but I think our problem is solved.

I intend to keep microsoft security essentials as my antivirus/anti spyware/anti malware program. So far there have not been conflicts with avast ... but if there are I will uninstall avast. Microsoft security essentials switches off windows defender as it does its job for it and supercedes it.