Lolvirus

[Tricks]

Regardless of the near-paranoid caution I use with my new computer, it seems all of my recent connection problems are due to virus infection. I’ve seen symptoms for a week now, losing my Steam connection for no reason, constant DNS errors when surfing, really slow start up times, and limited bandwidth.

Last night I had a stream of popups in the bottom right corner from “Vista Internet Security” proclaiming that I had thirty Trojans installed on my machine, and I need to register the software to get rid of it. (In before “it’s a trap!”)

I’m going to Boot in safe-mode tonight and try to have my anti-virus scan again (it didn’t find anything when I let it run a full scan). I don’t have the technical expertise to find whatever root-directory this is from, and I think my best option is to just reformat.

I haven’t reformatted a computer before. As far as I know, I would just set up the computer to boot from CD instead of Hard Drive, use my disks that came with my machine, and reinstall Windows? This is according to some forum I found at 1 this morning.

Thank you in advance BRB for all your help.

[Surf314]

Default boot settings usually go disk-drive then HDD so you probably won't need to change them to boot from disk. If you have a bootable disk in the drive it will just go. But if it doesn't when your computer boots you should get a screen that says at the bottom press "x" for setup. Hold down whatever that button is and you should get to BIOS where you can change your boot settings. Other than that you just follow instructions to do a clean install which wipes your drive.

[CaffeinePowered]

Id attempt to clean it first


Boot into "Safe Mode with Networking"


Use something like Spybot S&D, Malware, etc, and check your Add/Remove programs list.

On that list, remove anything you either A) Don't Recognize or B) Don't use


Are you the only one that uses your computer? Have you recently installed anything? And, are you connected through a router?


If you are the only one that uses it and connected via a router, the only way you are going to get something is by accidentally installing it yourself  :-\

[Tricks]

Id attempt to clean it first


Boot into "Safe Mode with Networking"


Use something like Spybot S&D, Malware, etc, and check your Add/Remove programs list.

On that list, remove anything you either A) Don't Recognize or B) Don't use


Are you the only one that uses your computer? Have you recently installed anything? And, are you connected through a router?


If you are the only one that uses it and connected via a router, the only way you are going to get something is by accidentally installing it yourself  :-\

I get that. I am the only one who uses it, and I do use a router. Yes, clearly this was an error on my part.

I did go through my programs last night. I have FireFox, Chrome, VLC, Winrar, and Gimp that are non-steam programs. Every other program either came with my computer and is on my Boot Disk or is a Windows product. Gimp is the only program to have been installed in the last 4 weeks that wasn’t downloaded through steam, and I used the link that Zane provided.

I went through my browsing history as well. Several Erepublik sites, BRB and HL Stats, EJ, New York Times, Lala, Pandora, Gmail, Banana FPS, Bad Company 2 Beta site, and several different Bioware sites (ME2, Dragon Age, etc).

Unless it was Gimp, I can honestly say I have no idea where I received it from. No email attachments, very careful with browsing, no strange downloads.

I guess shit happens.

[CaffeinePowered]

Unless it was Gimp, I can honestly say I have no idea where I received it from. No email attachments, very careful with browsing, no strange downloads.

I guess shit happens.

Sometimes it can I guess, god I haven't used anything more than windows firewall and my router for like 5 years and have never gotten anything....


Either way, try to use some of those free-cleaning tools if you find you still can't clean it out, then reformat. A great way to reformat too is to have multiple hard drives, that way you can just copy anything of any consequence to another drive, and wipe without worrying that you might lose something.

[Surf314]

Or partitions. I love my current setup though where all my OS shit is on one SSD and everything else is on an HDD.

[Tricks]

[quote author=TR1CK link=topic=4147.msg134413#msg134413 date=1264692045]
Unless it was Gimp, I can honestly say I have no idea where I received it from. No email attachments, very careful with browsing, no strange downloads.

I guess shit happens.

Sometimes it can I guess, god I haven't used anything more than windows firewall and my router for like 5 years and have never gotten anything....
[/quote]

Well, you are great with computers. I’m not. I clearly did something stupid but for the life of me I can’t figure out what.

I’m not really going to beat myself over it anymore though. Just want my computer back.

Thanks for the advice Surf and Caff.

[zaneyard]

Or partitions. I love my current setup though where all my OS shit is on one SSD and everything else is on an HDD.

a smart enough virus will move itself to other partitions

tricks: if this virus evades safe mode scanning and such
get yourself an ubuntu live cd, you can download an antivirus scanner from there and run it in the ubuntu environment. i think it's called clamwin
that ensures anything that would have booted up with windows, is sitting there in a file sleeping.

[HeK]

[quote author=Surf314 link=topic=4147.msg134415#msg134415 date=1264692900]
Or partitions. I love my current setup though where all my OS shit is on one SSD and everything else is on an HDD.

a smart enough virus will move itself to other partitions

tricks: if this virus evades safe mode scanning and such
get yourself an ubuntu live cd, you can download an antivirus scanner from there and run it in the ubuntu environment. i think it's called clamwin
that ensures anything that would have booted up with windows, is sitting there in a file sleeping.
[/quote]

I find that clam isn't too good.
What I haven been doing is using a Bart PE boot disk and launching the Web-based Housecall. It's hard to disable/bypass Housecall as it doesn't run as a standalone process.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

[Tricks]

Just got home. Can't even boot in safe mode. Windows starts, fake pop ups, freezes, crashes, shuts down.it doesn't even load the start menu or any other visable parts of windows.

[CaffeinePowered]

Just got home. Can't even boot in safe mode. Windows starts, fake pop ups, freezes, crashes, shuts down.it doesn't even load the start menu or any other visable parts of windows.

Id try what zane suggested if and only if you do not have a way to save your data, this would include a second hard drive on your machine. If everything is on one drive you need to either try wiping the viruses out using an Unbuntu live boot DVD, buy a new HDD and install windows to that, or take your HDD out and connect it to another machine.

Back up your data then wipe and reinstall windows.

[Tricks]

Thank you all for your help!

[zaneyard]

[quote author=zaneyard link=topic=4147.msg134427#msg134427 date=1264704016]
[quote author=Surf314 link=topic=4147.msg134415#msg134415 date=1264692900]
Or partitions. I love my current setup though where all my OS shit is on one SSD and everything else is on an HDD.

a smart enough virus will move itself to other partitions

tricks: if this virus evades safe mode scanning and such
get yourself an ubuntu live cd, you can download an antivirus scanner from there and run it in the ubuntu environment. i think it's called clamwin
that ensures anything that would have booted up with windows, is sitting there in a file sleeping.
[/quote]

I find that clam isn't too good.
What I haven been doing is using a Bart PE boot disk and launching the Web-based Housecall. It's hard to disable/bypass Housecall as it doesn't run as a standalone process.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
[/quote]
ah alright, i suppose i don't rely on it very often. but yeah Bart PE is good too

[Kirby]

Just got home. Can't even boot in safe mode. Windows starts, fake pop ups, freezes, crashes, shuts down.it doesn't even load the start menu or any other visable parts of windows.

Start boot sequence, wait for the little Windows Loading screen where The XP logo with the little scrolly bars, Win7's little Logo, or W/E Vista uses, let that go for a few seconds, but not long enough to go away, then either hit reset button, or kill power here. Windows will log the failed boot attempt and toggle the Boot mode choose screen.

[at0m]

[quote author=TR1CK link=topic=4147.msg134469#msg134469 date=1264721929]
Just got home. Can't even boot in safe mode. Windows starts, fake pop ups, freezes, crashes, shuts down.it doesn't even load the start menu or any other visable parts of windows.

Start boot sequence, wait for the little Windows Loading screen where The XP logo with the little scrolly bars, Win7's little Logo, or W/E Vista uses, let that go for a few seconds, but not long enough to go away, then either hit reset button, or kill power here. Windows will log the failed boot attempt and toggle the Boot mode choose screen.
[/quote]Or you can spam F8 after your BIOS screen, that'll also bring up the boot mode chooser.