I've been fighting a Trojan with a French name: Virtumonde.

I was just surfing along, not downloading anything, just looking at sites, and my resident Spyware Search & Destroy popped up its "Infected! Virtumonde" screen.

Virtumonde Removal Tools and Guide can tell you much more about this ugly disease, and also evaluates the removal tools. My symptoms didn't especially involve the ad popups that others report; my system got hijacked.

I've been involved in public networks since 1990, and never picked up a virus. Now I've seen not only this jack-in-the-box infestation but, right around Christmas when I was hunting coupons, there was an annoying bit of mischief that simply redirected Google search results. It was much easier to get rid of.

Earlier in the week, Virtumonde kicked me offline: All web sites loaded blank. My grinding computer creaked and often hit 100 percent CPU usage. Everything froze up and died. I scrambled to my laptop and it took a day to figure out how to get my browsers back.

Last night, the Infected! screen came back. I immediately pulled the plug, then booted into Safe Mode (by tapping F8 as it came up).

I couldn't log in as administrator, but immediately ran Hijack This, which quickly scans the registry and other key areas, and saw none of the bad stuff from last time -- it wasn't loading a proxy on my Internet connection (hence the blank sites), and the fake Session Manager executable file wasn't loaded in the odd System directory in Program Files, of all places.

I ran Malware Bytes, still in safe mode, and it found 4 infected temporary internet files. I deleted them. I ran VundoFix, which found four more, in Windows/system32.

Cautiously, I started Firefox. No proxy this time.

The first bout of Virtumonde disabled my registry editor and AVG antivirus software. The new Comodo Internet Security's antivirus scans behind its new firewall, and freeing the registry is next. It's not all gone yet; I'm still rooting out the hidden pieces, but my computer is quiet and stable again.

So how did I get this bug? Several antivirus sites emphasize that you must keep Java up to date, that these Trojans can exploit vulnerablilities there. I updated Java, which was out of date. (You can see if yours is current here.) If it's not you'll be prompted to download it.

It's worth having Hijack This and Malware Bytes on your computer so you'll have tools if you get hit. Run them occasionally so you'll be familiar with them when you need them. As soon as you open them, search for updates. If you can't connect for updates, that's a symptom too.

Hijack This throws up lots of false positives, legitimate files, so its best use might be to run it when your system is fine and save the log, so you can compare it with a later log when your system seems suspect.) If you give up and ask for help later, you'll need to upload your Hijack This log file.

Comodo will be scanning for a while, but I'm going to get some sleep. It's Friday the 13th, and my computer has virtual VD and I'm learning way too much about infection and corruption. This was a drive-by.

Fortunately, on Valentine's Day the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars. (Really.) This better be good.