Virus help

I need help with a bloody trojan my home computer seems to have picked up. Got an email from my service provider saying my address was being used for spam, and I'm also having problems accessing some sites, Yahoo, and Ebay seem to be no-no's at the moment.
It would appear to have knocked out Norton, as I can't even open it. I've uninstalled and installed about 4 times now and I'm getting no-where. The weird thing is I can't uninstall the two associated bits, live update, and definitions, so I suspect I've got something there.
I've done the online Symantec thing, it said the computer was safe from attack, and that their was no virus on it, also the microsoft malicious programmes check, and one or two others, but I can't download any other av software as it won't let me onto their site!

Am I going to have to reformat the drive and start again, or should I try buying some different AV software first?

Cheers

 

I gave up on Norton about 3 months ago after struggling with various problems, and finding their support to be rubbish.

I changed to NOD32 on the recommendation of another forum waller and haven't looked back since. Might be worth a try. You can download a trial version.

Regards
Dave

 

I'm obliged to use Norton AV at home as it's a condition of accessing my employers network via a VPN from my home PC. I've recommended it in the past but now find that it's slow and bloated and costs a fair bit. My usual recommendation these days is AVG Free. It works well and it's free

Michael.

 

Try EZ Antivirus from Computer Associates.

Download and install their Trial.


http://store.digitalriver.com/DRHM/...onsum&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&categoryID=653700


I use it and have found it to be 100% reliable. Never had a virus since, plus it's cheaper, faster and doesn't affect the computers performance like Norton.


GTM

 

trouble is guys I can't get through to these sites, I tried them all last night. This thing obviously knows what can kill it!

 

Looks like something rather nasty has decided to visit you home Windows? pc and by the look of things it does not wish to be evicted. From what you have said a clean slate is what you need but first have you tried first turning off the system backup / restore process prior to booting into safe mode and running the antivirus stuff? I know it a bit of a drag but still quicker than a fresh install of everything.

As for av code the previously mentioned AVG and NOD32 are imho very good when used in conjunction with Spybot Search & Destroy with LavaSioft Ad-Aware plus visits to respected security sites that warn of such problems should keep you on top of any future attack.

I often visit http://myitforum.techtarget.com/blog/hwaldron/ as this chap is a respected poster on the Mozilla Technical forum I tend to listen to his postings. He also distributes warnings via RSS feeds.

 

You can boot from the Norton disk and let it do a full system scan from there.

Had a similar thing with my dad's machine he managed to get 33 viruses on it (ya I know) took me ages to clear it, found that Norton wouldn't let me clear 2 of them, a little investigation led me to the services section of the control panel and the little shit had place itself in there starting up each time, I disabled the service (called system) and rebooted, it chen cleared the virus, these little buggers get everywhere, you have to do quite a lot of detective work to find and clear them out.

Morral of story, get a better firewall, anti virus software and keep it up to date. !
AVG Free and Zonealarm here plus a router with firewall, the only way to stay safe on the net IMHO.

 

Maybe someone could host it (AVG and such), and let you download it from a link posted on here? I'd do it if I had any idea how to

Or, if you can still access your email, possibly attach the .exe.

 

33 virues is nothing. I was shocked the other day when one of my colleagues bought in his home PC for me to have a look at. There's no way I allow 'outside' PCs onto the school network, so I burned the latest versions of Spybot/Adawae/Spyware Blaster/AVG onto a CD. An Ad-aware scan picked up some 600-odd items of spyware. Can't remember what Spybot found, but AVG also found about 15 viruses! Needless to say, when it left me, it had the above apps installed, plus Sygate Personal Firewall (less troublesome than Zone Alarm in my experience), plus XP Service Pack 2 (that wasn't even installed). The state that I find some home PCs in is shocking. It also had an install of McAfee, which refused to uninstall, so much poking around the registry and deleting of files was needed too. A good defrag and for a P3/650 with 256MB of RAM, it doesn't run XP too badly at all.

 

I also use AVG free no problems since.

 

Amazing, my old win95 p133 is still running fine after about a decade..Of course I used to use Opera for the porn, so maybe that helped!

This is typed on XP, so fingers crossed..

 

get a mac.

bye.

 

Ya that was 33 Viruses, I wasn't counting spyware, last time I did a adware scan on his PC it was around the 550 mark.

You should also have installed firefox and Thunderbird which will get rid of most of the spyware / virus attacks.

 

Assuming you can stay on line long enough,try this free virus removal tool;

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

I had nothing but problems with Norton 2005 and Websweeper,no such issues just running MacAfee firewall and AV and the free Microsoft Anispyware Beta1

 

Well I tried giving the machine a glass of water, and an aspirin, but gave up after a while, and I've reinstalled Windows. Fortunately it was a new machine, so there was nothing of value stored on it yet, I hadn't moved my documents etc. Hopefully that will have killed the bugger, shame about the time it's wasted though. I've got Norton AV and Firewall so I'm going to install those first. Then I'll connect to the internet!

 

I probably could have helped you - but a fresh install is always preferable anyway!

If you have access to another machine i recommend downloading and installing a few things before connecting to the internet as the norton stuff is not great:

Zonealarm (free and easy to use software firewall, sygate also good), Spybot Search and Destroy (free decent anti-spyware with regular updates), Spyblaster (stops most spyware from ever installing), Firefox (alternative web browser to IE which is inherently less vulnerable) and crapcleaner (used regularly will clean all temporary files out of your system - careful to uncheck the history and recently typed url options if you want to keep those and also cookies if you have passwords remembered etc). Antivir or AVG (free antivirus tool - although if you norton is current you could stick with that.

There are many more things to recommend and this is what i would call the bare minimum. The spyware/malware problem is so enormous at the moment that no one tool is anywhere near enough to find everything out there. Its a hassle but most of these tools require regular updates and scans to maintain their effectiveness.

If your internet connection is broadband you can try the panda online virus scanner (very good)
http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/activescan.htm

 

As Saab says, make sure your get Microsoft antispyware beta version on their site. I have had it for months and no longer need to run Spybot or Adaware.

 

Alas i doubt it will be free forever, at some point soonish it will probably require a subscription fee. And secondly although a good tool, it isnt capable of finding everything by any means. No single tool does unfortunately.

 

I'm sure they will charge for it sooner or later, but it is OK with me as long as it is effective.