This machine has never had an infection of any kind, with the exception of a search engine highjack that I got trying to dowload RFID a year or two ago, which I disabled in a few minutes. Malwarbytes and SuperAntiSpyware, which I installed at the advice of another here (and a Noron online tech un-installed) found the last traces a month or so ago, all dormant and untouched.
NPE gives the machine a clean bill of health, except for two false positives, a PowerDesk dll and the ASCII art app. Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware give the machine a clean bill of health excpt for a false positive for an old version of Norton Internet Security, Anti-Spyware edition. Nothing has ever detected an active infection of this machine or C: drive, or its predecessors.
The first thing that I did when I started having the 3038,104 was to run NPE. I run NPE periodically just for insurance, particularly since the nefarious and infamous Sony rootkit. NPE has never found anything.
Part of this is because I keep the best Norton product available on my machines, and I keep it current, part of it is because I am careful what I click on, and I suppose part of it is luck.
But, the next time I get a 3038,104 and need to reboot anyway, I'll run NPE again.