Dan Posted March 23, 2009 Posted March 23, 2009 No doubt. I had to wipe, reformat and reinstall XP from the original CDs. I knew I had something as my antivirus was popping up several things here and there. But then this thing, apparently, gets into the system files. In less than a day, my laptop was dead in the water - nothing but a blue screen (fatal errors message) on start up. I mean it was toast! Panic, my familiar friend, settled in for a rather late night. I'm telling you now, Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows saved my life. I was able to start off the CD, and copy all my files to a backed up USB drive. Not knowing how severe it was, I tried some virus scans again. After another day of fartin around, I wiped the drive, did a low level reformat and started over. Got it all going again, reinstalled my files. The damn virus hopped onto the USB drive and got back on my comp. So now I deleted all my installers, wiped and reformatted the USB drive. Transferred my files back to the USB - minus the .exe types. Wiped again, reinstalled, and eventually got back up. Then I just spent a couple days getting rid of trojan malware type things that were probably remnants of the original infection that got transfered with my personal files. All in all, it was a real B word to say the least. Reading a little these last few days, it appears to be a fairly new virus only a month or so old. None of the antivirus programs are able to fully remove it yet, and most troubling it doesn't just hijack your browser and slow your machine down, it rewrites system files, infects most .exe files and shuts your machine down. Definitely a challenge. Worst thing was... I didn't even get it cruisin for porn. So I didn't even get free porn out of the deal. I'm fairly certain I got it cruisin some nefarious sites that discuss hacking into programs and such (a late night hobby, if you will).
The Dean Posted March 23, 2009 Posted March 23, 2009 No doubt. I had to wipe, reformat and reinstall XP from the original CDs. I knew I had something as my antivirus was popping up several things here and there. But then this thing, apparently, gets into the system files. In less than a day, my laptop was dead in the water - nothing but a blue screen (fatal errors message) on start up. I mean it was toast! Panic, my familiar friend, settled in for a rather late night. I'm telling you now, Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows saved my life. I was able to start off the CD, and copy all my files to a backed up USB drive. Not knowing how severe it was, I tried some virus scans again. After another day of fartin around, I wiped the drive, did a low level reformat and started over. Got it all going again, reinstalled my files. The damn virus hopped onto the USB drive and got back on my comp. So now I deleted all my installers, wiped and reformatted the USB drive. Transferred my files back to the USB - minus the .exe types. Wiped again, reinstalled, and eventually got back up. Then I just spent a couple days getting rid of trojan malware type things that were probably remnants of the original infection that got transfered with my personal files. All in all, it was a real B word to say the least. Reading a little these last few days, it appears to be a fairly new virus only a month or so old. None of the antivirus programs are able to fully remove it yet, and most troubling it doesn't just hijack your browser and slow your machine down, it rewrites system files, infects most .exe files and shuts your machine down. Definitely a challenge. Worst thing was... I didn't even get it cruisin for porn. So I didn't even get free porn out of the deal. I'm fairly certain I got it cruisin some nefarious sites that discuss hacking into programs and such (a late night hobby, if you will). Tsk, Tsk! Sounds like a B word. Glad it all worked out. You must have caught a new variant of that, as that designation "Win32/Heur" is used for a whole bunch of (usually related) infections. Some are clearly more serious than others. The quicker you can get to them, the better chance you have at saving the machine. BTW, I'm guessing you use something, but if not, install WOT on your browsers. At least you will get early warning on many of the dangerous sites. I stay away from Red and Unknown sites, whenever possible. I rarely to to Yellow sites, either, if I can avoid it. http://www.mywot.com/
Dan Posted March 23, 2009 Posted March 23, 2009 Tsk, Tsk! Sounds like a B word. Glad it all worked out. You must have caught a new variant of that, as that designation "Win32/Heur" is used for a whole bunch of (usually related) infections. Some are clearly more serious than others. The quicker you can get to them, the better chance you have at saving the machine. BTW, I'm guessing you use something, but if not, install WOT on your browsers. At least you will get early warning on many of the dangerous sites. I stay away from Red and Unknown sites, whenever possible. I rarely to to Yellow sites, either, if I can avoid it. http://www.mywot.com/ Excellent suggestion. I hadn't tried that one. I shall, though. Yeah, I think it was some variant of win32.virut or some such nonsense. I wrote several names down but left all those notes in ID. So I'm going off memory. I can't help but be attracted to the dark side of the web from time to time. Occasionally it gets me into trouble, but what's life without a little risky adventure from time to time. But, sometimes don't you just want to see if you can get a program's title bar to be a different color or use your own image for the splash screen? There's several good programs out there that do great jobs at customizing/altering programs and all, but sometimes its more fun to figure it out yourself.
LewPort71 Posted March 23, 2009 Posted March 23, 2009 Avast is quite good, a nice product that does a lot. I lean toward Avira, but I have to give Avast it's due, too. I'll have to ask the computer guy at work about Avira. He connected me with Avast after I said addios to McAfee..
Live&DieBillsFootball Posted March 23, 2009 Posted March 23, 2009 I had a nasty fight over the weekend with some viruses. Not only did it slow my system to a crawl but it wouldn't allow me to run any av programs nor even go to the sites of any av or anti-malware software. It would just redirect me away from the site or block my access to the site. It took me about a day to clean it up. Had to go into safe mode and finally got Trojan remover form Simplysoftware to run. It cleaned up enough for me to be able to run Spybot, Malwarebytes and Threatfire which then found more which allowed me to run Avira which cleaned up some more. A major pain in the ass! I would love to waterboard the POS who wrote that virus. It really seems that viruses are getting nastier and nastier. I had Symantec Endpoint Protection running along with Spybot SD-resident and neither protected me at all from this episode. After this happened, I switched to Avira and Comodo firewall. Hopefully, they will protect better than Symantec Endpoint.
The Dean Posted March 23, 2009 Posted March 23, 2009 I'll have to ask the computer guy at work about Avira. He connected me withAvast after I said addios to McAfee.. Do that. Avira is very light, and has a great detection rate. But, it doesn't have all the various component modules (email, IM, etc) as Avast. I'm a pretty big believer in using what works for you, and is right for your PC and your computer habits. Avast is a top notch product, and I don't think I'd switch it, unless there was a reason. Avast, while faster than Norton, McAfee and AVG, can sometimes slow down a computer, much more than Avira anyway. But, if the computer is running good, Avast is a quality AV...no reason to change, IMO.
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