Nasty bug
 

has anybody had any experience of dealing with adspy/gdown?

No. but what would help is: What programs have you tried to remove this virus/trojan? assuming you are having problems trying to remove it!:hmmm:

After an experience yesterday I'se recommend Avast. :yep:

Hope you get it fixed Linton. :)

Free and 1yr FULL Home version trial : http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

Works with XP and Vista Great.

This pretends to be a piece of adware but it stops you getting into control panel,system restore even getting on to the internet.I used Avira and an anti malware to remove it.

Excellent, yes some of those are damn nasty, I always Ghost regularly, and if a really bad one causes too much damage I just re-ghost, whole system restored unattended in around 45 minutes!:up:

The whole thing took me 9 hours.This was due to some of the scans taking 4 hours at a go.

I assume you tried fixing this stuff in safe mode, as its nigh impossible to get rid of a lot of them if you try to do it while booted up normally. A few of the more malignant ones will even penetrate safe mode, which can require using a custom boot disk environment to bypass and disable it while you clean up the mess.

I did scan it in safe mode and normal boot,but thanks for the advice.