have virus vbs.startpage

[164smp]

Have discovered I have trojan horse called vbs.startpage on my computer running win 2000 pro. Norton does not detect this virus thru a system scan. This virus attaches itself to Internet Explorer and when I startup IE it get all sorts of nasty sites and popups coming up so fast you can't keep up with closing them. after a minute or so Norton will detect this activity and tells me a script is running and suggest stopping it which I say yes to. This shuts it all down and then Norton tells me that a virus named vbs.startpage is on my computer but it can not clean,fix or delete. Nortons instructions for removal are as follows
1 update virus definitions (done that)
2 run full system scan and delete all files detected as vbs.startpage (system scan does not detect any virus as I said earlier only when IE is running for a minute or so it knows something is wrong)
so obviously the above doesn't work. How do I get rid of this nasty thing. I tried to delete the file iexplore and it comes right back. I think I need to get rid of IE but how? It won't let me in control panel and I tried to just delete the internet explorer folder and it says files are shared and won't let me. SO does anyone have any experience with this one?

 

[wbg34]

Start your computer in safe mode and run the virus scan from there.

 

[164smp]

wbg34
I tried Norton full system scan in safe mode and it didn't find a thing. I then removed the file iexplore.exe and restarted the computer. then ran a install for IE ver 6 i had downloaded the other day. then tried to run ie again still getting bad stuff. Does win 2000 have a system restore I could turn off? and maybe delete the whole ie folder and reinstall or do you think there may be something in the system registry?

 

[wbg34]

Under symantecs description for vbs.startpage it lists a reg entry.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/vbs.startpage.html

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp

http://www.ravantivirus.com/scan/

 

[wbg34]

Sorry the last three hyperlinks were for online virus scans.

 

[164smp]

I have ran the trendmicro virus scan as well and it did not detect it either. I resorted to calling Norton. Of course this time it says it deleted the virus but the guy was kind enough to take me thru all my startup programs. Seems there are several hijacker programs and such which I need to remove. I am going to download Ad-ware and see if it helps. Thanks for your help

 

[wbg34]

Try spybot in addition to ad-aware they seem to work best in tandem.

 

[164smp]

I already had spybot but I did go and update it and have ran it and adware. They removed some stuff but I still had some files I had to go into safe mode to delete. IE seems to run much better now. We are not getting the garbage and it has kept the same homepage we set it too for to restarts now. Thanks again