Posted on 04/22/2012 7:00:47 AM PDT by Former Fetus
First of all, since I am asking for help with viruses, let me say that I am posting this from my husband's computer!
My IP uses McAfee, I have Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware in my PC. So I felt pretty safe.
Fri morning, I was reading Jewish World Review when a pop-up claiming to be MSE claimed my PC was infected. It was not one of those pop-ups you can X out from. In my panic, I could not remember what someone here, at FR, had told me in the past that I could do. So I turned off my PC. When I rebooted, I ran MSE and it showed 9 trojans. After removing them, I ran MAM and it still showed 2 or 3. I kept this game going on all of Friday morning and most of the afternoon. I would "scan and remove" with one program, then the other one would find something. By midafternoon both programs claimed my PC was cleaned and finally I could breathe. It is hard to hold your breath for 8 or 9 hours, LOL!
I was gone all day Saturday, when my son was running at a track meet. This morning I got on-line to see the results of all events and, you guessed it, the pop-up was there again. Only this time neither MSE or MAM found anything.
Ok, so these are my questions:
1)do y'all think that this pop up is a phishing attempt?
2)How do I get out of it without turning the PC off?
3)If it is a case of phishing, why did both av programs show any problems last Friday?
4)Besides running both MSE and MAM, do you have any other suggestions?
Thank you very much.
you might be interested in posts #34 an #50 regarding root kit viruses
.....wow, (LOL). Our entire I.T. department swears by AVG. It wasn't AVG that crashed your computer, my friend.
Well, I’ve been in I.T. depts for many years. We only use AVG because it is by far the best product. I haven’t heard of “avast” because I haven’t needed to look any further.
Second on Spybot. I remember the wife getting a virus like this on the home machine. I was also able to download a removal tool specific to the virus from Norton.
Can't say enough about them. Same here multiple times on my daughter's computer and they walked me right through the repair.
“We only use AVG because it is by far the best product”
Might want to rethink that. Most reviews I read rate them as about equal or give the nod to Avast!
I gave up on the free stuff years ago and run Kaspersky on all the computers I’m responsible for.
lots of good advice on here for keeping.
Yes, it was AVG that crashed my computer. Others had the same problem and were posting these problems with AVG for two weeks. AVG admitted it was their fault but their half arsed solution didn’t solve anything. So much for you IT dept.
“It was not one of those pop-ups you can X out from.”
When I see that, I immediately reboot.
It’s not really a virus, just nasty malware. Sometimes they even make it through the best pop-up blockers. If you are using any version of Windows, the easiest way to get rid of the malware is just running “Restore†and choosing a time before you got hit with the malware.
likely your infected with a root kit. your going to need to do an offline AV scan and cleaning. Don’t know if MacAfee has one, norton does and microsoft has one (free) If your system can run vista or 7 then your all good. Google microsoft system sweeper beta. download and build the correct version for your system, 32 or 64bit, on a non infected system. If you have a usb stick over 1gb you can use that, its faster otherwise you build it on a dvd. you’ll need to go into your bios to boot from the device.
Because your not using your OS the infection can’t hide. Any time I find any type of infection this is what I do just to be totally safe.
Thanks for the tip.
For the record I still have my PC.
But I use it only occasionally.
It’s been replaced for the most part by my iPad.
“Do NOT use AVG. It totally crashed my computer. Had to buy another computer.”
That’s absurd. There is no software issue that can force you to buy a new computer UNLESS you didn’t use the included utility to make restore media. Even then most computers have a restore partition accessible from the boot menu. Stupid not only hurts but can be expensive.
Downloads do.
Downloads do? Do what? Destroy your computer? If that’s what you’re getting at you’re still wrong. Downloads can only damage the OS installation. You should be able to wipe the HDD completely and start over with a new install of the OS.
By the way, I have had computers for 30 years. My first experience with computers was in college in the mid-1970s. We were programming in BASIC and Fortran and writing to punch cards which we then ran from a terminal in the computer lab connected to the University of Georgia mainframe. I have built dozens of computers and had my own computer repair business. I know what I’m talking about. It’s almost impossible for software to damage the hardware.
Safe mode prohibits the operating system from loading device drivers, where some of those little buggers hide, so they can be seen by the AV and cleaned. No, not a necessary thing to to otherwise.
I use MSE, Avast, Malwarebytes, and will occasionally run “spybot search and destroy”. When things get real nasty, I use “Hijack This!” (NOT safe unless you know what you are doing).
These rootkit attacks will disable your antivirus software, and will interfere with a clean re-install. They randomize their filename everytime you re-boot, so it makes it hard as hell to isolate them.
The Microsoft Techs said to scrub the drive and re-install everything. Uh uh. I took it real personal and spent those hours to beat that little sh*t.
And, to all you bozo’s who write that malware code - I’m gonna get ya. In time.
This prevents the trojan from accessing the internet to ‘update’ itself.
Secondly, reboot into ‘Safe Mode’...
I'm with you up to here, when you are in safe mode w/the net blocked why not just do a "system Restore" to a checkpoint dated before the trojan first showed up. It's simple and very quick compared to a full scan which doesn't seem to be working anyway. I say that 'cuz I got hit w/ the same "malware" BS, except I kept getting screens saying I needed to buy their program to debug my system ($50)... Method as described worked just fine.
Regards,
GtG
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.