Hi
From my personal experience, the answer is, yes, probably (there's a straight answer for you!). I spent literally days getting rid of the Trojan Zlob I got, but once every scan ran clear, the thing was outed.
But to be sure, you can get someone to look at a thing called 'HijackThis log' on that website.(it's a program you download to your computer, full instructions are given, again including pictures so you know you're on the right track). This is (more or less) a list of everything running on your computer, and will show up any odd things that are running, including non up-dated programs and un-invited guests.
If you get someone to check this, it can take days for them to get back to you, but they do get back eventually, and will look through this 'log', and give you advise about what needs to be removed, if anything.
If you have managed to remove the trojan zlob successfully from your computer your computer should be behaving normally,normal speed, with no strange 'pop-up' messages etc appearing.
Once you're gotten rid of this zlob, there are a couple of things you can do to stop this happening again:
McAffee site adviser as before
Change your browser to Mozilla Firefox: ([broken link removed]) ,if you're using Internet Explorer , as it is much more secure+++ than Internet Explorer.
Put Noscript (
http://noscript.net/getit) and Adblock plus(
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865) onto Firefox.
These are add-ons that make it less likely for you to get infections on your computer from browsing.You put them on by going to the top of Mozilla Firefox, pressing on 'Tools', then 'add-ons' , then 'Get extensions'. They act like a pain first (well, 'no script' does, but once you've used it for a while, and marked what sites you are happy to use, it fades into the background)
Put these two programs on the computer:
http://www.download.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_4-10196637.html
http://www.download.com/SpywareGuard/3000-8022_4-10514469.html
As they stop things getting into your computer in the first place. They also do not slow down your computer (ie very light on resources)
Hope this helps
Nicola
PS have you got a firewall? This is very important.The one that comes with windows is not adequate (it will not stop internet traffic in both directions...). I use Zonealarm free
pps Ad-Aware doesn't seem to be as good as it was before at all, I stopped using it
PPS if any of the sites you are on are requesting money, it is because there often is a 'free-ware' and a paid version on the same page. Chose the free one.