Martin Ellis wrote:

> A friend's PC with XP Home and AVG AV comes up with it having
> Links.exe present in C:\Windows\System32, and AVG tells him he should
> get rid of it,
> but even booting into safe mode with command prompt, a DIR listing
> says it's not there. Using attrib -h -s doesn't make it display
> either. Any ideas why?

If you Google for "Links.exe" you'll get a lot of hits. Here's just one:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com...epress@mm.html

I would scan in Safe Mode with either Sysclean or Dave Lipman's Multi-AV
to start.

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/...icros_Sysclean
http://www.ik-cs.com/multi-av.htm - how to use Dave Lipman's Multi-AV
http://www.ik-cs.com/programs/virtools/Multi_AV.exe - Multi-AV download

Then continue with general malware removal -
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/...moving_Malware

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User