"End footer" Virus?

[quigleys]

Hi! I am writing because yesterday our business computer received an email titled "end footer". It was from my sister. I did not open on it, as I saw it was an attachment and was wary, but clicked on it to delete it. When I clicked on it, it automatically downloaded something. I didn't know what to do, so I deleted the email, emptied the trash, then shut down the computer. Next time I turned it on it had a warning message that said the shortcut to Norton Antivirus had been deleted. I went into Norton and it said it had been disabled. I tried to enable it, but it wouldn't let me. Then, I noticed icons starting to disappear off the desktop! I tried to shut down the computer, but it wouldn't let me. Then, the screen went blue and a message came on saying "beginning physical memory dump". I unplugged the computer and took the battery out and that's how it sits today. I don't know what to do now! My sister did not get this virus (if that's what it is) and neither did anyone else I know that's in her address book. PLEASE HELP!
Kate McElliott, Office Manager
Quigley's Rare Books
Dahlonega, Georgia
EMAIL THAT I CAN OPEN FROM MY HOME COMPUTER STILL: quigleysbooks@yahoo.com
THANK YOU!!!

[Theoran]

Unfortunately, memory dumps are quite common in the laptops that I work on the run Windows 2000.

You should be able to put your battery in and bootup fine, but if I were you I would back up all of my important data to a second hard drive (or zip/jazz drive, CDR, CDRW, or even a floppy disk). I would then connect to the Internet and do an online scan for viruses. You can go here (http://www.cybertechhelp.com/html/av.shtml) to run an online virus scan.

Report what the scan reports back.

[smurfy]

This is a variant of KLEZ virus. I have had dozens of these flood my inbox.
The "from" address is actually faked by the virus - it wasn't from your sister at all, it's just a very cunning way for the virus writer to trick you.
Online virus scan at House Call will clean this and then you'll need to reinstall several items of software (including Nortons as it will have infected the nortons exe's).
You should then update your Internet Explorer/Outlook Express/Outlook versions to at least IE5.5 servicepack2 which will go a long way to preventing future re-infection by this type of virus which does not require the attachment to be opened by the recipient.