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virus help please
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
i recently had a trojan horse, my AVG software detected it and i locked it in the vault. on the whole my pc is running as it should. only, my pop-up blocker is on high and only the pop-ups i allow can get through. but i'm gettin all these poker pop ups and debt and crap. and ones sayin your pc is infected download blah blah blah, which looks like a con. how can i get rid of them? i've done several more scans and its saying everythings clear now, so i dont get it
ive got lavasoft adware coz my friend thought it might be spyware, done about 15 scans now and its findin stuff everytime. my pc was runnin okay last night, but i'm still gettin pop-up today and its keeps freezing for a bit and then working again
ive got lavasoft adware coz my friend thought it might be spyware, done about 15 scans now and its findin stuff everytime. my pc was runnin okay last night, but i'm still gettin pop-up today and its keeps freezing for a bit and then working again
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great anti-virus package for free. I've been using it for a few years and it's AS good as the big boys like Mcaffee e.t.c.
Get yourself a range of spyware removers and use all of them, then clear out all your internet files/cookies.
Tools>Internet Options>General Tab>Delete Cookies/Files/Clear History. Then goto Settings, set amount of disk space used to a low amount, 25Mb is sufficient. Then goto view objects and go through all the things, checking the properties and deleting any from sites you don't use.
I'd personally download
Spybot search & destroy: great at detecting and getting rid of spyware, fairly low on memory consumption, also as addition extras like a "teatimer" which alerts you every time something attempts to place itself in the start up. It also allows you to lock your IE settings and host file
Ad-aware: Have never relied on this soley since it misses too many things, but it also picks up a few others miss so swings and round abouts!
Windows Defender: *Queue a rant from the anti microsoft establishment! but it is pretty good at monitoring the general health of the PC.
AVG Anti-Spyware: Offers real time protection in the full version, but the trial version offers it you for 15 days or so, and still allows you to run updates and scans.
i also used to use spyware doctor which was great but its no longer free, well wasn't last time i checked anyway
Then of course you need a firewall and anti virus.
Many good free ones available, I've not tried the one recommended by Whowhere, i use AVG myself which i've not had any problems with, except a slight slow down on my ageing system during a full scan. But just find one that your system can run without any problems and you find easy to use.
Zone Alarm firewall is a common one, it's free and does it's job, not sure what others are out there, but again just find what other people recommend instead of clicking aimlessly on google links!
Make sure your version of Windows (if that is what you're using) is fully patched up, same with your IE/Firefox. I only use the pop-up blocker as part of XPsp2 and i don't have any major problems.
You'll also need to go through your add/remove programs and remove any shit in there! Check whats in your start up, either using the msconfig command, the slightly more user friendly start up viewer in Spyboy which colour codes things as to how suspect they are, or MikeLins start up monitor which again will sit in the background using the smallest amount of memory monitoring whats trying to put itself in your start up, and also provide you with a user friendly view of whats already in there and allow you to enable/disable them
I'd download these, or others people suggest, update them all, pull out my connection to the internet and run them all (perhaps not all at once!) get rid of anything suspect in the start up, restart the machine, run them all/a few again and see if theres any improvement, hopefully nothing should of replaced itself in the start up again, which means another reboot and scan should find no results.
Oh one final thing to bare in mind, just because the ad-aware picks something up every time you run it, doesn't ALWAYS mean its a problem, if you browse the internet for a minute or two and run a scan you'll pick up a couple of entries, these usually just being 'harmless' cookies
I'm sure others will have more advice too :thumb:
when it finds something do i move to quarantine or do i delete? so far i have been deleting
Deleting wont do much harm.
Another thing to consider when youve ran all these things is to turn off your system restore.
I'm not sure if its each time you make a system change, or turn off the machine, it makes a back up point and logs it so you can go back to it should you mess up your PC, obviously these will include evidence of your virus' etc... so you need to turn it off (this will delete all previous ones) then reboot run them all again then turn it back on.
I'd ask for someones opinion on this, i usually just go ahead, but because your deleting all the back ups, if theres a problem when you go to start it up this time it'll have nothing to look back to, I dont usually mind because i keep all my important stuff backed up so would just format it, however you may not feel confident doing that, or want to do it.
Im sure one of the more techy people would be able to tell you if its possible to do a restore back up on a CD or something, im sure there is but have never done it so can't say
Sounds exactly what my brother-in-law had... definately consider running the Vundo fix even if you think you are clear... will pick up any nasties lurking...
yeah already knew that, but it didnt say that.. it was a click here thingy
i'm so pissed off with my mate, if i'd known what a bugger he was gonna make of it i wouldn't have let him near it.
I was looking at one of these scams, it did end in .jpg
Was very clever and used a script. Something like www.website.com/script.php?=pic.jpg
wasn't actually a pic, and firefox was very vulnerable to it (downloaded it without any prompts! was a dos executable thing cant remember what it is, .bat maybe)
Reduced my confidence in firefox, I'll say that much
Just read your predicament.
You're not going to have much luck clearing out the virus. Think of it like cancer. It spreads and makes holes in your system like cheese, even if you deleted every instance you'd probably trash your system in the process.
My advice would be to backup your important data, and then reinstall your operating system and programs. This isn't as difficult as it sounds, if you were anywhere near me I'd do it for £15
I'd advise you not to waste your money on norton, there are better products out there which are free.
Although if you did a system restore you shouldn't have lost your files. How peculiar.
I would recommend creating a seperate partition if you have a lot of files. I'm a bit odd so kind of memorise things I need and everything else goes somewhere or other. But organised people, definately recommend backups
So did you use a manufacturers restore CD then? That might have wiped your files. It's a shame really.