Hi crunchie,

Yes I had been considering that, but it might take some time (or be impractical) as I've been using the PC for 5 years so the file may be *very* large (the Registry backup file is just over 100 MBytes).

However, I have made some progress: When I imported my IE favourites/settings into Firefox that stopped working as well, but with a report that the proxy setting was wrong. So I switched proxies off and both IE and FF now run. But the "Error loading DLL32" popup still appears at boot. If it's not required for IE either, what's it for?

Now that IE is running I've been able to try the F-secure online scanner (which is also claimed to fix infections) but it ran for about two hours and then it (or the PC) hung, so I've had to reboot. I wonder if it would work better (or at all) in secure mode? (if I can hit f8 at the right time).

Thanks, Alan.