Gurney -

Font changes sound a bit like one of the Macro malware bits that caused quite a bit of a problem for a while. Since a macro is a "legal" part of many office files, the standard AV "signatures" methods don't work well. It took a while for all of the AV people to get "macro defenses" up and working, and Microsoft did some fixes on Office programs to block the malicious ones.

The loss of soundcard and modem drivers sounds suspiciously like you may have been hit by Sony. The "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) programs they put on a number of Audio CDs installed Sony's own "player" in place of yours, and in the process crapped all over a bunch of drivers. Loss of all CD/DVD drive function was a main visible effect, but any CD, DVD, Audio, and/or web connection could be affected. Put "Sony" in the box, and refresh back about a month and you'll find a fair bit of discussion about it. Their "program installation" also opened a rather massive hole or two in normal Windows security, allowing malicious coders to use their setup to take over anything they want to.

If you tell your PC to play a music disk, and the disk installs a program in order to play, there's not much that any AV can do about it. You gave your permission...

Microsoft (and several others) have declared the Sony DRM systems to be SPYWARE and their AS programs (we think) now kill it.

Thus far there have been at least two distinct - consecutive - versions of SonyShit reported for PCs, and two slightly different ones for Macs - with others suspected. It's also been learned that some "Adware" people have been using the same rootkit method that Sony "made popular" for tracking people's web activities, with the suspicion that their crud also opens security breaches in machines they get it on.

John