GardenBanter.co.uk - Beware of usenet replayer

Argh!!! What a frustrating day. When I arrived at work, the person whom I
needed instructions from for a task I was going to work on had not arrived
yet, so since I had nothing else to do, I felt like looking at some orchid
photos, and I thought I could access alt.binaries.pictures.orchids using
usenet replayer's site. I had looked at this site from home in the past and
had thought it was pretty cool, despite the many ads displayed on the site.
Well, I will never go on this site again:

Usenet replayer's site infected my work machine with adware programs, which
while detectable by Symantecs' virus scanner and Adaware, cannot be deleted
by them ... or rather Symantec or Adaware will claim that it has
successfully quarantined and deleted the threats, but as soon as I reboot
the machine it's infested again. I tried all kinds of stuff, rebooting the
machine in safe mode (didn't work because the adware was not visible in safe
mode -- full scan resulted in 0 threats there -- but as soon as I was back
in Normal Windows mode, there they were again), I followed all instructions
for manual removal of the adware from Symantec's site including deleting the
values from registry etc etc. Again it looked like all was clean, and then I
reboot, and it has all reinstalled again. Grrrrrr!!@#$@$##@!!!!

On Monday my work machine is going to be reimaged. I tried to back up my
documents, but I fear that as soon as it is reimaged I will either find out
that (a) I forgot some essential document and now it is irretrievably gone;
or (b) I included a piece of the adware in my backup and I will continue to
have all the problems.

So beware of usenet replayer's site. And may this never happen to you.

Joanna