Windows 8 system.
(I originally posted this on Woody's Support forum and someone suggested I repost here.)
A couple days ago Norton 360 found Trojan.Zbot on my office PC. 360 said it could not remove the virus. I immediately did multiple scans and it found it repeatedly, each time with 360 saying it could not make the repair.
Following Norton's instructions I first updated my 360 the current version and ran the scan. Again Norton fournd it but could not make the repair.
Following instructions on the Symantec website I next downloaded and ran Norton Power Eraser which said there were no viruses on the PC. However a subsequent running of a 360 scan again found the virus and could not do the removal.
Again following Symantec instructions I downloaded and ran Norton Bootable Recovery Tool. It had the exact same results as Power Eraser, not finding anything wrong. But again 360 found and could not fix the virus.
At that point I did a chat with Symantec and they ran some remote scans that had the same result. In reality they just reran the 360 scan and then the Power Eraser scan. They said the virus had to be manually removed with special tools and wanted $99 to fix the problem.
Before paying Norton I did some more investigation on my own. I found that 360 was locating the Trojan.Zbot virus in one of my Thunderbird INBOX folders (multiple email addresses). I emptied the inbox of all messages and did another 360 scan. The virus was still in the INBOX.
Then I deleted the INBOX completely and let Thunderbird create a new one on next startup. This made a difference and 360 found the virus in the Recycle Bin. I emptied the Recycle Bin and 360 scans repeatedly say the computer is clean. It seems the virus had imbedded itself in the structure of the INBOX.
So ....... my question. Having deleted the INBOX from the Recycle Bin with the emptying process did I completely remove the virus from the hard drive? Or in just removing the indexing of those hard drive sectors is the virus still lurking there where it might again raise its ugly head? I fear I may have totally screwed this up by emptying the Recycle Bin.
Thanks,
BH