Comments on: Princess Needs Help

By: ramza

ramza — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:10:43 +0000

I’ve had fairly good success lately with the free Windows Live OneCare Safety scanner. I know it’s a Microsoft product and so some people frown on it, but it scans for viruses/spyware, fixes registry errors, defrags your drive if it needs it and cleans up the temp files.

I’ve heard surprisingly good things about the 15 day trial of Norton 360 from one of my coworkers for when he can’t just erase a computer that’s infected.

Also Kaspersky has a free online scanner, but I’ve seen it throw off some weird false positives because it scans ports and can see chat programs as a virus.

If you’ve got the space and want to get really adventurous, you can always make a small Ubuntu partition and use the Ubuntu antivirus to scan the Windows partition.

By: Grailspiral

Grailspiral — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:01:14 +0000

Scott, the EXACT same thing began on my computer a week ago. I also had some fake “windows defender” popups nonstop. I copied all my important files in SAFE MODE (press F8 during startup) onto a new external hardrive I purchased ($100), then brought the hardrive to my computer guy at work. He has seen everything over the last ten years and believes the latest trojans are some of the nastiest. He removed everything from my hardrive then reinstalled but the virus keeps altering itself and hiding. He installed hundreds of dollars worth of spyware, firewalls, malaware (all free), but the computer is still having problems. I might have to purchase a new hardrive for a few hundred bucks, as it seems the be the best bet. I wish you luck.

By: parliboy

parliboy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:14:16 +0000

Best way to fix this us to not be in Windows for a bit. You need a live cd or live flash drive to boot into, with tools to make repairs.

By: Jamie Coville

Jamie Coville — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:11:58 +0000

I’d recommend going into safe mode with networking, THEN installing and running the programs.

You may also want to try a registry cleaner.

By: Mark B

Mark B — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:05:48 +0000

Do you happen to know the name of the file or where on the hard drive it’s located, or what kind of Trojan is specifically causing the problem?

By: nwa88

nwa88 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:12:10 +0000

Make sure you attempt all of this in safe mode if you can get there. Malware/Viruses can go stealth and shutdown processes / cause crashes when you try to do things it doesn’t like (such as go to anti-virus websites, launch anti-malware programs, etc.) Plus in many cases, you can’t always remove every last trace of the malware unless you are in safe mode, and certain malware (such as Vundo) can regenerate themselves from just a few remaining traces of the original infection.

You should be able to get to safe mode by pressing F8 on your computer as it’s booting up (after your computer beeps, but before the Windows loading screen comes up)

By: 009

009 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:11:13 +0000

You should probably try thoroughly reading what she wrote. Especially the part about not being able to install Malwarebytes.

By: bfunk24100

bfunk24100 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:03:47 +0000

I have two programs that should clear it up.

1. an anti virus that finds stuff that others like avg and avast can’t find, it’s called Removeit xt pro it’s free and you can find it here….

http://dailyfreeware.net/2006/09/26/removeit-pro-xt-se/

2. the other program that is excellent for getting rid of malware is malwarebytes, also free. you can get it here….

http://www.malwarebytes.org/ download the free version on the left

enjoy

By: guy incognito

guy incognito — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:37:43 +0000

HijackThis should do the trick (just google for it, it’s free).