Yay, the first tech post on PCD in AGES!
SpEks, thanks for the post in response to my distress call.
However, it looks like some of the advice in the article is bogus (not your fault, but rather the fault of the article's original author, which seems to be someone who works for Spyware Doctor). For example, it lists
checkip.dyndns.org and a few other legitimate websites as "Conficker Worm sites".
Additionally, the article suggest that you can kill Conficker processes using the Task Manager, but this is not the case. Conficker attaches itself to system processes like svchost.exe and services.exe, which you can't just 'End Task'.
Overall, it looks like the author of the article has copied and pasted a template rather than actually writing an article that is specifically targeted at removing the Conficker Worm.
Anyway, I was successful in removing Conficker by using the tool supplied by BitDefender at
www.bdtools.net. It's one of the few AV sites that a Conficker-infected computer can actually access!
Now all that's left to sort out is that rootkit file that I mentioned (a .SYS file with a random filename that resides in the %windir%\System32\Drivers folder). Herewith a screenshot:

I have a sinking feeling I've posted about this before on PCD.... but I've completely forgotten about it since then. I'll do a Search later and check.