Virus infection

Skip Miller

Skip Miller

Final Approach
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Feb 22, 2005
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Skip Miller
I have a virus. The noticable effect is slow operation of the laptop, and when operating certain programs (like Firefox) there is an audible message. "You have a problem. You have an opportunity" and then a little later, "go ahead and click on it. I dare you!" These are approximate transcriptions of the voice output.

I don't know how long I have had this virus. My normal mode on this computer is with the sound switched off. But it has been slow for a while.

The laptop is a Dell PC clone. I'm running XP Pro and Firefox 3.6.8. I have AVG Free 9.0.851 with an up-to-date database, and it finds nothing.

Hints on chasing this one down will be appreciated!

-Skip

ps: Turning the audio off again is not a good solution! :rolleyes2:
 
This is my saga, all better now.
http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34483&highlight=malware
At this point, I would try the freebie offered by microsoft. You have to be careful, the malware one itself has a name very similar to the microsoft AV software! MS Security _______ Essentials or Defender. One is bad, bad, the other is the one you need.
Go to the MS site.
 
In my relatively limited experience with viruses, I've found it easier to just simply back up what data you want to keep, and then reformat the hard drive and install a fresh copy of windows, effectively "starting over."
 
Arbiter419 said:
In my relatively limited experience with viruses, I've found it easier to just simply back up what data you want to keep, and then reformat the hard drive and install a fresh copy of windows, effectively "starting over."
Click to expand...

+1. In addition, you can get to a cleaner install anyway.
 
Arbiter419 said:
In my relatively limited experience with viruses, I've found it easier to just simply back up what data you want to keep, and then reformat the hard drive and install a fresh copy of windows, effectively "starting over."
Click to expand...

Yes, it's easier and almost an assured fix. But in my experience, it's rarely necessary. I've only had to do reinstalls about half a dozen times in my life. I've also done many more because the client had nothing of importance on the machine and a reformat was the quicker fix. The real problem is one of time. Almost any broken or infected Windows system can be fixed. But it can take a lot of time once it's become rootkitted.

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Yes, it's easier and almost an assured fix. But in my experience, it's rarely necessary. I've only had to do reinstalls about half a dozen times in my life. I've also done many more because the client had nothing of importance on the machine and a reformat was the quicker fix. The real problem is one of time. Almost any broken or infected Windows system can be fixed. But it can take a lot of time once it's become rootkitted.

-Rich
Click to expand...

...and you call yourself a professional. I had a house cleaner - not wealthy by any means - who was paying some maroon $50 about every month to reinstall Windows.
 
mikea said:
...and you call yourself a professional. I had a house cleaner - not wealthy by any means - who was paying some maroon $50 about every month to reinstall Windows.
Click to expand...

That strikes me as pretty unethical. Your house cleaner needed guidance and education, which I trust you provided.

I charge a lot more than $50.00 to do a reinstall, but especially in cases where people are repeatedly getting their computers infected, I teach them what they're doing wrong and how to avoid future problems. That's where the "consultant" part comes in, even if we're talking about a home user with simple needs.

Reinstalling the system makes sense when a person only uses the computer for Web surfing and email (especially if they use a Web-based email system) and have few or no documents or applications to restore.

It takes about an hour an a half to completely reinstall an XP system from a standard installation CD, including installing the drivers and all updates since the media was stamped. If they have a recent image, it takes even less time than that. Repairing a badly broken or rootkitted PC can take hours. Why bother if there's nothing important to be saved?

But on the other hand, some users (especially small businesses) have expensive applications, some of which they cannot obtain reinstallation media for, so a reformat is not the best option. In other cases, they may have the media, but the total time to back up the data, reinstall the system and updates, and restore all the apps and data exceeds the time to repair the system.

My point is that a reformat/ reinstall may often be the quickest and sometimes the best option. But it's rarely necessary. Few Windows-based computers (with the possible exception of Vista 32 machines, which tend to crash with gusto) get so badly broken that they can't be fixed.

-Rich
 
A complete reinstall is the only sure way to be clear of the malware, but you have received good advice on how to proceed short of that and if those ideas work, you are good to go.

But at this point all your passwords, accounts, and anything else you might wish to protect are at risk if not already compromised.

Continuing to connect to the internet with an obviously infected machine is an exercise in suicide. If your machine is part of a home network, it is possible or even likely that your other machines are also at risk if not already compromised.

Act accordingly.

I recently had to do a complete reinstall of Windows XP on one of my laptops, which despite a firewall, router, and Norton 2010, got infected, no doubt due to my own carelessness in surfing to an unsafe web site. Fortunately, I had a full system backup (Acronis True Image) that was very recent, so it was quite painless to start over.
 
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Jack Spectre said:
That program saved my bacon more than once, especially on the kind of malware you've described.
Click to expand...

I have run the Malware scanner. It found a bad registry entry (after I had scanned the machine with a registry fixer named Uniblue which did not detect this problem). So far this morning, things seem to be back to normal.

I'm not ready to declare the problem solved - that will take some more time in use to be sure. But so far, so good.... :wink2:

Thanks all for the help and advice! :cheerswine:

-Skip
 
It is a long and sometimes arduous journey but MUCH BETTER than a full install, especially if you've had the machine for more than a few weeks (or don't have the install disks). I would suggest you start out at spybot. Take a look at the forums for malware removal. There are some useful hints and tools there.
Remember, not every tool finds every problem. Use the various tools noted above, and the additional ones you find on spybot. There is one from Trend Micro (Hijack This) which is a good start too. Run them several times until clean.
And as a caution, get the infected machine off the home network (noted above). Don't write files to disks or flashdrives until you're sure it passes all the tests cleanly. Turn off autorun on all your machines. There's no reason to have it start and it is a great way to infect your system.
Nothing wrong with AVG (free or commercial). Don't use IE. Add a pop up blocker. Pay real close attention to the JAVA pop ups that run. Skip the dancing bear or wiggly bug commercials.
Lastly... and someone has to say it... buy a Mac. No, just kidding. Though you could look into LINUX if all you're doing is web surfing, email, and word processing. It looks different but runs faster and does lots.
X-Plane is great!
 
Best thing I've found is to use a program like Acronis' TrueImage and take a partition-level backup (booted off the CD or USB) of your system the minute the installation is complete, after any major changes like adding/deleting/upgrading applications, and quarterly. You can then quickly get back to any of those "known" good points, often in less than 30 minutes.
 
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