I got a dell 8400.

yesterday while on the net i made a wrong turn and my computer went nuts. i knew it wasn't a good thing. well that was someone loading up spyware in my computer. i went through shifty posts a figured how to run a scan over the internet. it help but couldn't get the main infection. Well it seem it reloaded it self again and every other infection it came with.

i need someone to drop a step by step. I've done this once already, just want to have something in case i get stuck. thanks.

I have my brother laptop to get on the board.

You may be able to remove whatever keeps reloading if you have software installed to scan and remove that you can access while in Safe Mode. When you boot in Safe Mode then not all services start up. If that don't work then you can reinstall the factory image.

You should have a re-installation cd that came with the PC from Dell. Pop that in and restart the PC. Once the PC starts to boot up keep hitting the F12 (may be the F8 key) and it will get you a boot menu. You want to boot from CD.
Once you boot from the CD then you just follow the step by step instructions. It will show you "partitions". you should have one that is around 30 mb and one that is the rest of the hard drive. Choose the big one and tell it to reformat that partition. This will take a little while. Then is will ask you if you want to reinstall the operating system on that partition. Say yes to this. It will go through the OS reload and when done it will reboot.
Now, once this is done you will need to get your blue CD that has the device drivers on it. It will say this on the disc. You will need to run this cd and look on the left for Drivers. Choose this and look for device drivers on your system model (8400). Then it will open up a list and have check marks next to the things your PC has. Sometimes it will list 2 drivers for the same type of item. Choose the one that best applies to what you have in your system. You will need to install most all these drivers to get everything to work again, i.e. sosund, correct video, and your Network Card (this is important to get back on the net). Once all this is done you will need to reboot and then go to Start, Programs, Windows Update. Run all your updates from Windows except the one for your Sound Card (this tends to break the audio in my experience). You will have to reboot and go back to the updates 4-5 times or more.
if you don't have antivirus then go here: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5
You can also download Microsoft Anti Spyware to help.
If you are not already using Mozilla Firefox I would highly recommend it: http://www.mozilla.com/

Shifty may want to add more to this if there is something I left out. This is all from memory so I may have missed a step.

OK, I got my computer back online. right now I'm installing software. At least this time i backed up my important files. thanks for the help

I actually called dell right when i saw your post and they ran me through the same thing you said pretty much.

Just glad you got it fixed.

i would have done a system restore and rolled back to a time before the infection, then ran a scan on it once you rolled back.

i know i had more options but i really wanted a good reason to overhual my system. This finally gave me a reason. Dispite the time it killed this morning. I'm happy. Everything is clean. I really got to get a laptop or something to BS on cause i use this computer for work.