I've been hit with the odd virus before but the Virus Scanner has usually sorted it or the Firewall blocked it.

I'm on Vista and was suddenly hit with a page claiming my computer was being blocked because of illegal activity and to unblock it I had to pay a fine.

Immediately I shut everything down and disconnected from the Internet. Then I attempted to boot up in Safe Mode. From there I would use System Restore to load up settings from before this had happened but...

I can start up and press F8 to get to the "Advanced Boot Options". From there I can select Safe Mode which loads and I see the Safe Mode Desktop but as soon as it is loaded my screen turns solid white. The cursor arrow is visible for the mouse but I cannot see the screen, only white. If I hit Ctrl Alt Del it goes to the full colour wi rows page for task manager options but when you go back it's the white screen again.

If you turn it off you can see the Safe Mode desktop just before it closes. It's like the hacker who designed it programmed it to throw up this white screen to prevent people from resolving it with System Restore.

Does Anyone have any idea how I can implement System Restore? Is it possible from the Advanced Boot Options?

I went into a computer store for some advice and they said they could fix it for ￡50.00. I may as well have paid the crooks who made this malicious program.

Any ideas or help would be very welcome!

Thanks in advance.

Az