Dear Forum experts.
I have a number of issues I am struggling with.. which I hope the forum experts could perhaps share some light on.

I work on a foreign study programme in Africa. The students come from various countries and they bring their laptops, and of course a wide spectrum of viruses, worms etc and general pc and mac related issues. As we are a field based course we have little access to internet, which limits my ability to assess, and fix infections.

As we are all using flash drives, pen drives, portable hard drives, to get documents and other information to and from the students, thus making the spread of viruses-malware-worms etc a real issue. During the previous course I had to re-install XP on two laptops that died on us. Not sure it was due to the course's infections or just general misuse of the two laptops, and I had reports of numerous infections on most of the student's laptops.

The latest course started last week. I was rather careful and checked that all students had up to date antiviruses, and only had two laptops that was seriously infected with diskknight, brontok and ntde1ect.com. These two laptops of course had NO antiviruses of any sort... I have downloaded the recommended programmes from IANAG and will use these to try and clean these two laptops in the next few days.

This brings me to my first question:
Is there any recommendations from the experts on how I should be handling the influx of 20 laptops, checking them, cleaning them .We do not have a LAN network, as we are constantly on the move to different field sites. In general the laptop user's are not really aware of the infections they have and do not really keep their laptops clean. Is there any recommendations in me controlling the spread of viruses and worms for the next three months, other than personally monitoring +20 laptops daily or having to install +20 antivirus programmes. We do not really have the internet facilities to be downloading the big update files, that e.g. Trend Micro and other antivirus progs for example require upon installing the programme. In addition I cannot do online scans for these laptops either...

Any ideas?

Then my second problem.
We have a main core computer that we use as the central computer for giving presentations, to store the deliverables etc on. This poor machine is therefore constantly exposed to infections and other issues. I am running and have Trend Micro PC CILLIN, (up to date etc). It fortunately detected some of the infected flashdrives from the students, and these infections were cleaned etc. However, the laptop recently to start behaving mysteriously. Acrobat Reader and Excel stopped working yesterday, saying the files acrobat was accessing was corrupt, and excel keep crashing. explorer also terminates randomly. The machine has slowed down to a crawl, even if there is no CPU usage....I have done a Trend scan, and this morning got access to Panda online scan and it reports the machine to be clean. On occassion Trend Micro (PCCVScan.exe and PCScansrv.exe) process are running using +60%cpu resources...

HJT file:
Logfile of HijackThis v1.99.1
Scan saved at 10:06:28 AM, on 1/28/2008
Platform: Windows XP SP2 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v7.00 (7.00.6000.16574)

Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\Program Files\Intel\Wireless\Bin\EvtEng.exe
C:\Program Files\Intel\Wireless\Bin\S24EvMon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5\guard.exe
C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth Software\bin\btwdins.exe
C:\Program Files\Executive Software\Diskeeper\DkService.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VS7DEBUG\MDM.EXE
C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\PcCtlCom.exe
C:\Program Files\Intel\Wireless\Bin\RegSrvc.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\Tmntsrv.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\TmPfw.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\PcScnSrv.exe
C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\system32\hkcmd.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxpers.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\tsnp2std.exe
C:\WINDOWS\vsnp2std.exe
C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\hp LaserJet 1160_1320 series\ToolBoxFX\bin\HPTLBXFX.exe
C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\hp LaserJet 1160_1320 series\HP UT\bin\hppusg.exe
C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5\avgas.exe
C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\Internet Security 2007\pccguide.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe
C:\Program Files\X1\X1FileMonitor.exe
C:\Program Files\X1\X1Systray.exe
C:\Program Files\X1\X1.exe
C:\Program Files\X1\X1Service.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\tmproxy.exe
C:\Program Files\zabkat\xplorer2_lite\xplorer2.exe
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\PCCMAIN.EXE
C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\PccHCMS.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskmgr.exe
C:\HJT\HJT.exe

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://www.google.co.za/
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Int ernet Settings,ProxyServer = proxy.wits.ac.za:80
O2 - BHO: AcroIEHlprObj Class - {06849E9F-C8D7-4D59-B87D-784B7D6BE0B3} - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\ActiveX\AcroIEHelper.dll
O2 - BHO: AcroIEToolbarHelper Class - {AE7CD045-E861-484f-8273-0445EE161910} - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll
O3 - Toolbar: Adobe PDF - {47833539-D0C5-4125-9FA8-0819E2EAAC93} - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [igfxhkcmd] C:\WINDOWS\system32\hkcmd.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [igfxpers] C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxpers.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AzMixerSel] C:\Program Files\Realtek\InstallShield\AzMixerSel.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [tsnp2std] C:\WINDOWS\system32\tsnp2std.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [snp2std] C:\WINDOWS\vsnp2std.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [ToolBoxFX] "C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\hp LaserJet 1160_1320 series\ToolBoxFX\bin\HPTLBXFX.exe" /enum:on /alerts:on /notifications:on /systrayIcon:on /fl:on /fr:on /appData:on
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [HPUsageTracking] "C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\hp LaserJet 1160_1320 series\HP UT\bin\hppusg.exe" "C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\hp LaserJet 1160_1320 series\HP UT\"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Windows Defender] "C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MSASCui.exe" -hide
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [!AVG Anti-Spyware] "C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5\avgas.exe" /minimized
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [pccguide.exe] "C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\Internet Security 2007\pccguide.exe"
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [ctfmon.exe] C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [X1FileMonitor.exe] C:\Program Files\X1\X1FileMonitor.exe
O4 - Startup: X1 System Tray.lnk = C:\Program Files\X1\X1Systray.exe
O4 - Startup: X1.lnk = C:\Program Files\X1\X1.exe
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert link target to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECapture.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert link target to existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppend.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert selected links to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECaptureSelLinks.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert selected links to existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppendSelLinks.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert selection to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECapture.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert selection to existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppend.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECapture.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert to existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Acrobat\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppend.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Send to &Bluetooth Device... - C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth Software\btsendto_ie_ctx.htm
O9 - Extra button: Research - {92780B25-18CC-41C8-B9BE-3C9C571A8263} - C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~2\OFFICE11\REFIEBAR.DLL
O16 - DPF: {8436FE12-31DB-48BF-83BF-FE682F9160B4} (NanoInstaller Class) - http://www.nanoscan.com/cabs/nanoinst.cab
O20 - Winlogon Notify: WgaLogon - C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\WgaLogon.dll
O23 - Service: AVG Anti-Spyware Guard - GRISOFT s.r.o. - C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5\guard.exe
O23 - Service: Bluetooth Service (btwdins) - Broadcom Corporation. - C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth Software\bin\btwdins.exe
O23 - Service: Diskeeper - Executive Software International, Inc. - C:\Program Files\Executive Software\Diskeeper\DkService.exe
O23 - Service: Intel(R) PROSet/Wireless Event Log (EvtEng) - Intel Corporation - C:\Program Files\Intel\Wireless\Bin\EvtEng.exe
O23 - Service: Trend Micro Central Control Component (PcCtlCom) - Trend Micro Inc. - C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\PcCtlCom.exe
O23 - Service: Trend Micro Protection Against Spyware (PcScnSrv) - Trend Micro Inc. - C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\PcScnSrv.exe
O23 - Service: Pml Driver HPZ12 - HP - C:\WINDOWS\system32\HPZipm12.exe
O23 - Service: Intel(R) PROSet/Wireless Registry Service (RegSrvc) - Intel Corporation - C:\Program Files\Intel\Wireless\Bin\RegSrvc.exe
O23 - Service: Intel(R) PROSet/Wireless Service (S24EventMonitor) - Intel Corporation - C:\Program Files\Intel\Wireless\Bin\S24EvMon.exe
O23 - Service: Trend Micro Real-time Service (Tmntsrv) - Trend Micro Inc. - C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\Tmntsrv.exe
O23 - Service: Trend Micro Personal Firewall (TmPfw) - Trend Micro Inc. - C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\TmPfw.exe
O23 - Service: Trend Micro Proxy Service (tmproxy) - Trend Micro Inc. - C:\PROGRA~1\TRENDM~1\INTERN~1\tmproxy.exe

I am not sure what I am missing or doing wrong. Any help will be appreciated.
Shark