Well, it finally happened to me, too. I think it was when following a link from furl, but I'm not really sure. When I logged on I started getting messages from MS Anti-Spyware about "ActiveSearch" trying to install itself. The problem was that hitting the Remove button rendered IE unable to pop up any windows at all (no ctrl-N new windows, no Google toolbar search results, no javascript popups that are apparently quite popular on the website Shannon has to logon for work). And, in fact, telling IE to pop up a window would lock it up hard.

So, in the meantime as I sorted out my pernicious VX2 infection, I installed and ran FireFox. I really like the tabbed browsing, which is a lot cleaner and better organized than having a number of IE windows grouped on the taskbar. However, FireFox is ugly and dog-slow. It has the fuzzy, out of focus graphics controls that remind me of running Netscape 4.2 under X-Windows on the Sun workstation at Wright State. It just doesn't look right. Of course, I could probably forgive that sin if it weren't so slow. It is only version 1.0.x.

Of course now I'm faced with a dilemma. After about 4 years of surfing with IE, I finally caught a drive-by download thingy despite having locked down IE fairly tightly (although not as tightly as possible because I wanted to keep it moderately useful without getting 6 confirmation dialogs every time I surfed to a website). So, do I give it up and go with the safer (yet ugly and slow) browser or just continue to take my chances? Being out of commission for 2 days every 4 years seems like a small price to pay.