I think I might have a virus

So there I was earlier this evening, minding my own business, surfing the www. My Norton anti-virus program told me that it wished to do its weekly virus definition update, so I clicked on OK and away it went, downloading the latest virus definitions.

Shortly after it was done updating its virus definitions Norton anti-virus pops up a warning message on my screen telling me that I have some virus called "Backdoor.Optix.Pro" or some such name (I can't remember the exact name). I clicked on OK and I was going to do a full virus scan, however when I went to click on the program icons on my WinXP desktop I kept getting an error message telling me that Windows cannot find the .exe to start the program and that I should do a search to locate the appropriate .exe for that program icon.

The only icons on my desktop that work are Internet Explorer, MS Outlook, My Computer, and My Network Places. When I click on all the other program icons I get the above mentioned error message. I can't even start up my registry editor by clicking on Start/Run/Regedt32.

Is this error being caused by the above mentioned virus? Or is it due to something else? How can I find and delete the virus? Or am I condemned to reinstall WinXP?

I thought Norton anti-virus was supposed to quarantine any detected viruses? I was thinking of doing an online virus scan using the free version of Panda anti-virus tomorrow afternoon when I have the time.

try the symantec site and look up the virus you have- it gives details on how to remove it.

here's the link
http://securityresponse.symantec.com...xpro.10.b.html

I had something like that few days ago, download EXEfix08 from :
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmbox/Reticulated/Toys.html

Then run the .com
you wont even have to restart , the exes will work nicely again.

is was a virus
The virus gets in the registry. with the entry Winservices.exe in some where.

Hmmm, this is bizarre. I thought that I might have the Yaha.k virus so I downloaded a yaha.k repair file from Symantec, booted WinXP into safe mode, and ran the repair file. It didn't find the Yaha.k virus anywhere on my drive, but. . .after the repair file was finished I decided to click on one of my desktop icons in safe mode and low and behold the program loaded normally! I booted WinXP back into normal mode and everything seems to work fine now, programs load when you click on their related desktop icons, etc. Norton anti-virus even works again now (I will probably do a full system scan later on).

I checked the Quarantined Items report in Norton anti-virus to see if it had any info on that virus warning it gave me yesterday. It said the virus name is Backdoor.OptixPro.12, and that it had infected the winampw.exe file that resides in my c:\windows folder. When I tried to repair the infected file it said "Could not repair this item", however Norton anti-virus is still quarantining it.

More information on Backdoor.OptixPro.12 can be foundhere.

I'm wondering if my system was really infected in the first place, as the description of Backdoor.OptixPro.12 at the above URL does not seem to match any of the symptoms that plagued my machine.