What might be the new 'Conficker' worm............

For the past 2 days, I have been unable to connect to the 'Net and reach

such sites as Symantec or McAfee for a system check. I was lucky to reach

Dell forums by a roundabout method.

I am running an Inspiron 531s with Vista Home Basic, 1982 MB RAM, 250 Gbytes

HD and a 2.10 Ghertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual care processor. Also used is 2009

Norton Internet Security, CCleaner, Defraggler, Ad-Aware, Spybot - S&D, an HP k280,

Hijack This, Revo Uninstaller, and various antispy and malware programs.

I believe I now have the pleasure of entertaining a new worm, possibly Conficker,

since all the symptoms point to it. I am unable to reach any web site, essentially

those sucurity firms that can run a test for such an invasion. I can reach Google,

but not any sites thru them. I had hoped to make use of Hijack This, but the worm(?)

is preventing this also.

I want to accomplish a Factory Image Restore but I am prevented from obtaining

my password to get the program started.

My question is, does anyone know a way around the password dilemma,

or perhaps a way into the file?

Thanks so very much!

arnmh1