Bizzarre Virus-- I think it's a virus...

From: Lauren (Lauren_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/31/05 

Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:57:02 -0800

My boss's computer at work uses XP (Home Edition, I believe, it's his
personal computer as well). We recently have had a spyware problem, tons of
pop-ups, etc. I thought I fixed it by running Spybot Search + Destroy, but
then I came back from the weekend only to find that NOTHING is working.
Something has gotten into the system and keeps turning off the automatic
Virus Protection (Norton), and it's to the point now that we can't even open
anything. If I'm lucky I'll be able to get a document to open, but nothing
off of the start menu, anything like that... I can't even get to my Control
Panel to do a System Restore, which was the only thing I could think of to at
least get this to a manageable point! I just don't know what to do...
whenever I try to open anything a program crashes "Dr Watson
something-or-another," which is clearly a virus... but it always comes back
and shows up in the task manager...

Any thoughts??
I would even appreciate it if anyone can just think of how to calm this down
long enough to get a System Restore done... something...

lauremo16@hotmail.com
(No, I'm not 16, I'm 20... )