My 56K connection started to slow down. Ran Netstat -a in XP and found lots of TIME_WAIT refs to coolwwwsearch.com. All were on Local
Port 1026 with Foreign Ports in the range 11xx. I think I managed to shut down port 1026 in my firewall but I still get coolwwwsearch.com
listed when I run Netstat -a. Can't make this go away despite latest Spy Sweeper removing "Websearch" and "Cool Web Search". Is this
just some sort of false alarm?

Probably not a false alarm; have a look at this thread.
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread5690.html
In particular, look for CWShredder; you may also want to post a hijackthis log.

I think I've got this sorted.

Thanks for the link to thread5690. I used CWShredder *in safe mode* to remove CWS.Smartsearch. Did a full virus sweep and used Adaware, just to be sure I had a clean system. It's worth mentioning that CWShredder didn't find anything in "normal" Windows mode. It needed Safe Mode to fix the problem.

Netstat -a no longer mentions coolwwwsearch, which is great news.

Cheers

Thanks for reminding folks of that -- If you're running any cleaning progams and they don't seem to be getting 'everything,' try running them in Safe Mode! It's also a good idea to keep all temporary files emptied because some 'intruders' like to hang out in these.