1) Checked status with both Adaware & Spybot. AdAware clear, Sybot no threats found!

2) Ultimate startup - no entries in any of the 4 categories

3) Started Firefox & went to Astalavista
- 1st meaasge I got was that I needed a plug-in - Plug-in finder Mozilla Firefox seemed to want Java. I eventually shut that window as I couldn't make any sense of what it was that was supposed to be downloaded
- At Astalavista I selected (from Underground search I selected ms******.com) & used A***** as th search arg
- upon reaching that site I had a request to install a 'Content Access Plugin 1.01' - I declined.
- From the ms******.com site I clicked on a link to the****.ws site
- I clicked on their enter link
- I had an unsolicited pop-up window that said timeout trying to access 81.13.66.62 - I closed it
- at the******.ws I clicked on 1st link in their list
- I did a search on M**** (the full name :-)
- I selected a product belonging to the nominated company
- A window opened with the requested info & also there was a request to vote on this site
- I clicked 'vote for us' (several screens later I gave up)
- At this point I had had enough & closed all the windows

- upon exiting firefox I got an error screen ...
'Firefox.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close'
I was advise to notify Microsoft. I clicked the don't send button
- next I disabled the VPC XP's network adapter & ran Spybot, Adaware & Starter


RESULT
======

Adaware:
No malware or cookies or any new problems

Spybot:
'No immediate threats found' !!!!

Starter:
Clean

- I am surprised, I thought there would be some artifacts of this fact finding exercise :-)

#2 - I later found that Spybot immunization was active - for reasons I can't determine at this time, the immunisation won't switch off - I may have to restore the original VPC and repeat everything without having invoked the immunisation which I had done for a separate test.