What dialup ISP do you use? I've experienced your problem and I felt it was the dialup connection software (NetZero). So Every time it happened I went and uninstalled Netzero and reinstalled it. The problem would go away but reappear in a month or so thanks to my son. By this time you'd find that NetZero settings and computer settings have changed. I could not afford to reformat it and did not. In case you reinstall XP with the system folders and files deleted, there is simply no way the spyware stays active, unless somebody again manually reactivate it by running it somehow. You have to make sure that autoexec.bat is empty while reinstalling too. Before reinstalling other packages it is a good idea to remove the old package's folders first. For those who wants to stay away from viruses and spyware, I have some suggestions. When time is good ------------------------ 1. Keep a constant backup of your disk, including the operating system by using track copies of disk. Do not keep too many copies, though. 2. If you can afford use two computers, possibly one embedded real-time router as an Internet access device. There are many ISPs which support linux and BSD for dialup connections. And Linux and other Unix systems inherently support IP forwarding and masquerading and firewall and are a good choice as front-end computers. The second computer (Windows, Linux) is for personal use like research and development working behind the firewall. 4. Be picky about turning on the security features unless you know you need it. When prompted, double-check what it wants to do. Disable dynamic, automatic updates/upgrades of any software. It is simply not worth it. 5. Do not allow suspicious folks to work in your computer. In particular do not let them run their EXE, BAT, COM programs in your computers unless you are quite sure what they do. 6. The first thing you'd like to do to all unsolicited popups is to kill them unless you are ready to take a chance. 7. Do not trust screen savers, anti-virus kits and spywares, antispywares unless you know the makers are reknowned ones and have a lot in stake in the business. These are known traps. 8. Ask your ISPs to block group mails if it makes sense. This is one way to keep away from worms. 9. Do not allow any scripts in your mail to run directly unless you know what it is. 10. Keep multiple copies of files in some other computers. When time is bad ---------------------- Backup is paramount when trying to fix your disk, files, OS etc. The idea here is to avoid reinstall of OS, worse reformat. 1. Run reliable virus scan tools. Do not trust all internet sites that claim to have good antivirus software. 2. Run Scanreg.exe 3. Run scandisk.exe 4. In case you have a bad experience and need to reformat the disk, just first uninstall all packages you could reinstall again later, then reinstall the operating system anew. And then reinstall your packages anew. If it does not fix your problems then some shareware and freeware that do not register but runs during bootup from autoexec.bat etc are the culprit. You might luck out and just deleting those freebies will fix the problem. 5. While reformatting, it is wise to format a partition at a time. 6. If after reformatting it does not change the situation, then I suspect the web sites you visit may be doing something, or worse the ISP itself. Probably it is time to change your OS to linux or BSD;-) PS My XP crashes at least once a day, but my linux desktop has been running for over a year continuously. Though, XP is crashing because my application gets some protection faults but still it should not have crashed anyway.