I'm wondering if Microsoft uses virus infection as a means to force/encourage people to upgrade.

A week or so ago I got infected with an alureon rootkit (bad stuff), MSE would quarentine it but wouldn't remove it. Infected computer is still on XP. I looked for help online (Microsoft) but basically found very little. Most of what I read was "open a support ticket" which to me is no help. I also saw posts from people in support forums that said the MS support tech had been unable to help.

I also found one general Microsoft doc about rootkit removal, but as it wasn't specific to my case the directions were very vague.

I attempted to remove to the rookit with MSE and the Malicious Software Removal Tool, several times to no avail. Seemed like kind of a joke.

So I looked further into the internet tubes to see if I could find an answer as I'm a do it yourself kind of guy.

On another site I was able to quickly find a removal tool, it took less than 30 seconds to detect and remove the rootkit and replace infected system files. From there I was able to use MSE to remove other less serious viri the rootkit had downloaded. Result was a clean machine, working fine again.

After the fact, I was looking at my drives and noticed that MS had downloaded the MSRT to a couple different places on my computer and they had also downloaded the USMT.

Why would they download the USMT without my knowledge unless they intended me to use it? It just struck me as odd... Like they didn't really intend to try to remove the rootkit. Does that seem wierd?