My antivirus program keeps finding "Music Search Trojan". It says that it cleans the infected file, but a few days later the virus always returns. I need to find where it is coming from.

Christina, August 2003

Well.. that might or might not work

I had a similar problem and the only thing that fixed it was this:

(My resident virus-scan kept finding the file but a regular scan did not)
Go to Control panel/system and disable system restore. Reboot, run the virus-scan just in case, then enable the system restore once again. Disabling the system restore deletes all the associated files (and restore points).

Worked fine for me, after trying anything else I could come up with for days.

Eric, November 2003

Euan's correct, but he doesn't mention that he is referring to windows XP. This method will work with windows XP and probably windows 2000.

If your antivirus program finds the Music Search Trojan in "c:\system volume information" make a note of the file which is infected and then delete it. If you don't delete it Music Search will keep coming back.

Also, one more thing to try. Check your startup apps in the registry. Delete strings to apps you don't recognise that end with "-quiet" or "/quiet" (I'm not going to describe how to manually edit the registry here. If you don't know how to do this it is probably too dangerous to attempt this.)

Carl L., September 2003

MusicSearch finds its way into the System Volume Information. This is a system folder, which is normally hidden. Go to Windows Explorer and click Tools>Folder Options>View and untick "Hide protected system operating files (recommended)" then scan the folder ("C:\System Volume Information") with your anti-virus program.

Euan Whoelse, August 2003