Outlook Express insists on dialling out despite "connections" setting

[Philip Herlihy]

I've been working on a machine which was riddled with viruses and spyware,
now seemingly clean. Outlook Express ("provided by blah" - where blah is a
porn provider) behaves oddly - it insists on dialling out (the number's that
of the current, respectable, ISP) even though set to "never dial a
connection" in Internet Options. This makes it give up on sending &
receiving without "noticing" that there is a working wireless LAN
connection. IE 6 behaves normally.

Any ideas?

 

[refv2]

I've been working on a machine which was riddled with viruses and spyware,
now seemingly clean.

(snip)

Key words = seemingly clean. How did you clean? What did you use to
clean? Give us some input and you might get some viable answers.

Later

 

[Philip Herlihy]

Fair point (although if I'd given the whole history I wonder how many might
have waded through it).

Norton Antivirus 2003 with the latest updates, and the Panda online scan now
find no viruses (they certainly did before. I've cleaned off all sorts of
rubbish with Adaware and Spybot S&D, but was still left with a Coolwebsearch
variant. I found the utility on www.hsrecover.com got rid of that. I can't
detect anything amiss apart from the Outlook Express branding, and the fact
that it persists in dialling out when it shouldn't. I should have added
that the machine is running XP Home, SP1, with IE6 SP1, will all published
patches to date. Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated.