If you have McAfee VirusScan, McAfee has a fix for this beastie available at thier website. (norton probably does too, but I didn't check there) FWIW, Egghead had McAfee on sale for $24.95 after $20 rebate.
If you have the bad luck to have been bitten, here's a manual procedure for removing the worm:
Manual Removal of this worm
Win9x-
Run the System Configuration Editor –
Select the Start menu from your desktop and Run SYSEDIT.EXE
2. Select the C:\WINDOWS\WIN.INI window.
3. In the line run =, remove the listing run=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\EXPLORE.EXE
Select File > Save, then Exit.
4. Select the Start menu and Shutdown -
Choose Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode;
Click Yes. (This action purges EXPLORE.EXE from system memory.)
5. Once your PC is in DOS, type EXIT to return to Windows. (This action reloads Windows without EXPLORE.EXE in memory.)
6. In Windows, remove the file, EXPLORE.EXE, from your system -
Click Start > Find > Files or Folders;
In the Find: All Files dialog box, type EXPLORE.EXE in the (Named) field;
Click Find Now;
Delete EXPLORE.EXE
WinNT-
In Windows NT, this worm runs as an "explore" process in WinNT Task Manager. You may experience high CPU utilization prior to ending this process.
1. Run the WinNT Registry Editor -
Click Start > Run > Open REGEDIT (not REGEDT32).
2. Locate the hive [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Windows].
3. Highlight the following key "run=C:\\WINNT\\System32\\Explore.exe" and remove by pressing the Delete button.
4. Restart Windows NT -
Click Start > Shutdown.
Select Restart and click OK. (Your system will now reboot.)
5. Remove the file, EXPLORE.EXE, from your system -
Click Start > Find > Files or Folders;
In the Find: All Files dialog box, type EXPLORE.EXE in the (Named) field;
Click Find Now;
Delete EXPLORE.EXE
FWIW, my wife works for Computer Associates, and they too, have been heavily infoected. As of Friday night, she said they had found a fix and apparently a means of recovering the wacked MS files. I'll try to find out more and post the detail here on Monday. In the meantime, don't open any zipped files & stay safe. M2
