I finally scraped the evil rootkit out of my Windows box, ironically by way of Ubuntu.

I installed Ubuntu while the Windows partition was on the floor.  Ubuntu, by the way, was beautiful, and we might still be using it if not for the fact that my wife feels that OpenOffice is “clunky” and not a true replacement for office.  The fonts and antialiasing were beautiful, significantly better than Windows. Application installation, the usability of the shell, etc. was great. Hardware detection also worked really well, with one exception: My Canon MP780 printer did not work absolutely reliably, sometimes I would get an unspecified error attempting to print.

Another impressive addition to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is the ability to reliably read and write NTFS partitions, which it mounts automatically.

Support for writing NTFS partitions in Linux enabled me to go into the Windows directory and locate root kit malware that might otherwise be undetectable. The other thing that I think was helpful was l2mfix, which helped repair some of the admin permissions tweakage that rootkits perform and to detect suspicious files.

I’m really impressed at the progress that desktop linux has made. A truly professional class office suite is the only missing ingredient.