10mm BAND OF FLASHING ICONS ACROSS FULL SCREEN

I have a two month old machine running XP Home, fully updated. It is a P4, 2.8GHz, 256MB, with SiS650 VGA. My problem is a band of flashing, see thru icons across full screen about 1/3 down. This disappears after being on standby but reappears at reboot and at other odd times. I suspect a virus but nothing seems to get rid of it.

I am background running AVG, Nortons 2003, Zone Alarm and MS AntiSpyware beta. Also scan regularly with SpyBot S&D, AdAware and RegClean Ute.

Any ideas please. MS AntiSpyware is blocking a suspect file 'zcdqtm' from adding to startup - would it be safe to try to remove this?

 

Hello rowal,

I suspect a virus but nothing seems to get rid of it.
To confirm or eliminate that possibilty, follow the steps in this thread:
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=37074

Regards - Charles

 

flashing icons

Greetings Charles.
Thank you for your reply. Am working my way thru your suggestions but will take a while. No result from Bit Defender. Am getting Hijack This logs while band is there and when it's gone to see if there is anything obvious.
Cheers.

 

Carried out all suggestions with no positive result so did a 'destructive recovery' which took the machine back to original factory condition. Still have the band of icons on boot up which I can get rid of by going to standby for a few seconds so it appears the problem has become embedded in the boot sector.
The only program I found that caused the icons to appear each time it was started, is Mavis Beacon 9, (typing tutor), which I have uninstalled but this was a store bought CD.
I'm baffled. Is there any possibility that this is a fault I can get fixed under warranty?