I am sorry if this was mentioned before somewhere, but I first checked the search feature looking for "virus sources" in hope to find the answer to my question and didn't come across it during my normal browsing through these forums.

I'm in a panic right now; apparently my brother's laptop has been suffering under tons of viruses I wasn't aware of - now I wish to discover where the root of this problem began, and when.

I have a pretty good start - the porn. Although, the time interval from when the temporary internet file(s) were downloaded to the time unusual programs made their debut (a debut of which I wasn't notified of) is considerably large (I'd say about a month 6/9/05 -> 7/18/05).

Is it possible that this would be the root for all this havoc? These some odd [lots] of viruses that came out of nowhere (I just performed an avast! check not too long ago) just seemed so... sudden and those programs that were blocked - I had no idea that they were even there! Now I'm going nuts - I'm very paranoid about stuff I've been downloading like for example Trillian [multi-msging program] or doing stuff like watching Family Guy on winamp tv. and I begin to worry about What if... whoever now "owns" the laptop can try to gain entry into my computer under the common network. Maybe I'm being paranoid about this, irrationall paranoid - kinda like how I always made sure my zip files for counter-strike movies that I got from csmovies site and fileplanet were always scanned. It's stupid, I know, but you should see me in school and when I take tests.

Under zonealarm, I have disabled sharing on the network. Hopefully that provides some relief. Hopefully.

My hair is turning gray - I lost sleep yesterday worrying about my computer - and even worried about alone putting the installation disks so I could reformat the system... There aren't those kind of viruses that would affect the reformatting process... are there? I don't know, but I made sure I killed off whatever I could with trial anti-virus from avast! and trend micro's Housecall. Everything was deleted whether it was a system file or not - I don't care, I'm not going to bust my butt cleaning everything.

I'm a wreck, please tell me I'm just reacting irrationally to the situation. People tell me I am one in 500 who suffer the same situation, and that mine isn't particularly bad since I've got nothing to lose. It's just uncomfortable knowing that someone's been controlling my computer = my life. ;-;

I hope to be more knowledgeable about the situation. This is a rude wake up call to internet security - tomorrow I shall be purchasing the books : Network Intrusion Detection
Counter Hack Reloaded , and Malware - Fighting Malicious Code [as suggested by an antionline member actually].

Some day I'd like to return the favor for the community sooner or later if the community would help me throughout this time. Please.

[Pardon my grammar skills. I grow weary as these late-nights get ugly. ]

-Thanks, n2c.
(It took me a long time to post. I'm still new at this security stuff, but I'm willing to learn. By the standards in those 'readme' posts, It's hard to post anything without fear of getting flamed. )