hELP I've been virused

[Dandontdare]

My PC has picked up a nasty virus that I can't seem to get rid of. I googled it ("metropolitan police Ukash virus" - it basically claims the police have locked an illegal PC and I must pay a fine to unlock it) and found websites advising me which registry entries I need to delete, but when I try it just says "could not delete the selected file".

AVG antivirus doesn't work. Basically, if I log in as myself, NOTHING is possible, not even task manager, I can still pretend to be my second user and get in though, but without system admin permissons.

Any advice of a good free virus killer that may work, or how to delete stubborn registry entries?

[Emperor]

Sounds like the one I got the other week that proved to be a solid pain in the arse. AVG didn't work for that but this did:

www.malwarebytes.org

[Emperor]

I also have this installed on a pendrive as the first thing some viruses do is disable the anti virus you have installed:

www.superantispyware.com

Then make sure you've got your bases covered:

• Anti-virus - seems you'll have that sorted
• Anti-spyware - I use Spybot S&D
• Firewall - I assume you have one

The big key change is to have a separate admin account (which you don't use as your day-to-day account) and then set all the user profiles to just the average settings.

This will nail everything down - software usually can't install itself or change the registry or contact the Web without you being alerted. Some can get in and do naughty things (like the one I had) but they can't sink in deep hooks, so they are easier to remove (the one I had was able to make enough of a mess to convince the user that they need to pay for, download and install software to fix the problems - which is where your problems really begin). After making the admin account changes I've had very few problems.