one thing you could try is downloading and running the fantastic A-squared antispyware program, I find this program will usually pick up a few things that all the others miss as it uses an entirely different scanning engine. there is a free and paid version available. Also Simply super Softwares Trojan remover is another good and legit program to use. I am not sure if they gave a free version but i am sure a quick search on google will find that. This program helped me out last year when i got hammered by a virus and all my other programs didn't find it but trojan remover did and removed it and fixed my system without having to reformat. Good luck mate i know how frustrating it can be when you get a virus but perservere and you should be able to win this battle

www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/

and it is free.

Just for information and not that it's going to solve your situation. Comcast doesn't offer McAfee anymore and it will expire very soon if it hasn't already. If you have Comcast you now get the full Norton Security Suite 360. If you go for it of course you would have to delete McAfee first.

http://security.comcast.net/ 

Loaris Trojan Remover

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Loaris-Trojan-Remover.shtml

Thanks for the link DaveBax that will be done next week.

Thanks for the link machanix76.

Hi Jafo!!  You might be right, this one has been impossible to defeat so far.  The Norton free online scurity scan I went to from the Comcast Security web page came up blank also.

If you do decided to reformat then think about how you want to set up the computer as fas as security goes.  Turning on the restore points function might be a start and then establishing a restore point after doing scheduled clean up and running scans would be good. 

Should...

Dump just about anything that says 'BHO'....that'll help.

Reality is tho that Browser Hijackers can be a pain in the bum to chase down/remove....As Ripley said..."Dust off and nuke them from space....only way to be sure."

aka

Reformat....

Ditto with the reformat,one more thing & it's free, macrium reflect it's an imaging program,only point i need to make is you need to create one time images (not to be confused with cloning as that's the whole hard drive including partitions),also it pays to have two copies of an image on seperate hdd's & take the images as you go starting from initial install

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

CNET,PCWorld are good places to get free securityware

You also might want to consider using something like returnil or sandboxie

EDIT:Forgot to mention spywareterminater,it's pretty much the same as SUPERantispyware (or however it's spelt) except you get full funtionality & with HIPs enabled nothing can install without your knowledge

Well...before reformatting...Have you considered using Firefox instead of the slow and dangerous IE8? Seems that the problem is IE related and it's a good chance to dump it for good and enjoy much faster and safer browsing!

If you like to be even safer, you can install AdBlockPlus and No-Script add-ons (for Firefox) to stop malicious code.

If that doesn't help, no need to give-up before you tried installing few free antivirus programs (but you'll have to uninstall the current one every time). Try Avast and Avira at least!

Wouldn't be surprised if that was down to the 'infection' too....nothing better than crippling one of the methods of infection resolution...

What driver does it stop on prior to reboot? If the Startup screen is as far as it gets, threw in an XP disk and do a repair. If it will boot into Windows run: sfc /scannow

Hit pause where the driver fails to load and tell me what it is. (hit enter to continue reboot). My guess is it's Mup.

I just wanted to say that Bleeping Computer solved everything.

If you ever have unsolvable system problems give them a try.

Problems they resolved for me:

Booting The computer wouldn't boot into safe mode.  It does now.

Internet Explorer 8. Unwanted popups, forced installs of fraud anti-virus packages such as ave.exe.  No longer occuring.

Web Seaches.  Web search results pages would be hijacked to unwanted web sites.  No longer occuring.

Check out my topic!  Bleeping Computer was great.