"Shadow copies" or a virus?

Question

This USED to happen when my old PC got infected w/some Trojans and a Klez worm (my fault), but I hadn't seen it in a LONG time. Now, many of my Word files quickly get a "copy", but with the beginning of the file name replaced by other symbols, like this:

"$˜sume". I keep deleting them but they come back right after I close a file! I have Avast Antivirus, Comodo Firewall (which I LOVE!) and Spybot Search & Destroy. I'm pretty thorough about scanning and can't figure out how/why these got here. I'm still running XP, w/no plans to switch anytime soon.

Is it all the music files my kid downloads? Or is it a part of Word? OR could it be my idiotic decision to download IE 7? I use Firefox whenever possible. (btw, the option of making shadow copies is NOT checked). Arrgh! Help!

Answer 1

If your kid is using Limewire to download music (which seems to be the craze these days) he is playing with fire.  Many folk here report being infected from using Limewire.

Answer 2

Restart your PC in safe mode with networking

http://www.pchell.com/support/safemode.s...

Download, install and run a full scan with Malwarebytes

http://www.malwarebytes.org

Run a full scan with Micro Trend House Call

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

After the scans, restart the PC and update your anti-virus, remember to only have one anti-virus installed on your PC

http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-...  [Free, if you do not have one]

Answer 3

You might be seeing the ~$ files Word creates for its own purposes.  They usually disappear when the file is closed, though I've seen some hang around for some reason.

For instance, I have  file named To Do List.doc open right now and there's a file ~$ Do List.doc nearby.

Hope that helps.