The patient almost succumbed

Man, was I pissed. A couple of weeks ago, I got hit with a particularly nasty virus. The computer that is, not me. I run XP because I like it. Vista does nothing for me as a operating system, and is a memory hogger. I also disable virus protection programs as they slow down performance. I do however use a free shareware program called Ad-Aware once a week to clean out the ad stuff that gets planted on the hard drive and use a pop-up eliminator on my web browser.
Well I got hit with a virus called Spy Protect 2009 that some retard/s placed on the internet. Contrary to popular believe, you don't always get a virus in the e-mail, but more likely off certain websites. No, I'm not going to tell you what sites I hang out at! Anyway, this virus throws pop-ups on your screen every few seconds stating your computer is infected with a virus, and to go to a certain website where for $29.95 you can buy the Spy Protect program to download and rid your computer of the problem. Basically, these retards have planted the virus on your machine and are trying to extort $29.95 from you to remove it. It makes your computer virtually useless you pay up.
If a local person pulled something like this on me, I would string them up by the nuts, and hang them off the North Haven bridge. But being on the internet, the perpetrators could be anywhere, even Russia, so I can't get revenge.
Anyway, I did a google search and found a lot people have forums and advice about this virus, along with at least six companies promising to get rid of this virus if you buy their software for 30 to 50 bucks. After reading the forums, I found most of the software programs don't even work on this virus and the companies are conartists
I could of just reformatted the drive and restored it to factory default. But I really wanted to save a lot of the data I acquired over the past year. So not having any dire emergency to fix it, and I have a little 8 inch netbook on my wi-fi netbook to check my e-mail, etc, I poked around for a while and finally found directions to remove the hidden files. Part of it involved removing several lines of code from the registry. Not really wanting to do this, I poked around the forums longer until I found directions to a free shareware site, where I could download their anti-virus program. I downloaded it, opened and ran it. Rebooted and now back in business. No signs of this virus along with over 600 other suspicious files this software has removed. The patient appears to have made a complete recovery.
Spyware Protect 2009 Sucks!