Re: I've been hit - real HARD.
thanks for the tips guys... unfortunately everything that's been mentioned in this thread and the spyware help thread is pretty much a standard, and I followed all the steps that I could think of.
The good news is that I have managed to undo the damage manually... it took about 3 - 4 hours but its done. I basically looked for anything new that had been installed on my computer in the last week and reverse engineered some of the .exe files to see what was going on. I must say the spyware/malware developers have actually gone to great lengths to make sure the problem never gets permanently removed by sweepers. The problem replicates itself using Win XP system restore features and some system level dlls.
I had to remove around 70 odd .exe .dll and .dat files from the windows and the sindows\system32 folders.
Here's the full procedure that I followed. I noted all the steps to post this as a how-to in the spyware help thread which I will shortly.
Enjoy: :)