Need Help!!!

[BeeSting]

This is totally not related to RTW but I need your help, urgently....

My computer just got infected with adware, spyware, virus, or what have you.... What is the best free download program to detect and remove these buggers from my system?

Your help would be most appreciated.

[BeeSting]

My Norton Anti Virus system detected an adware but could not remove it.

[AussieGiant]

Search Google for Spybot Search and Destroy or Spybot S and D.

It is free.

[Dutch_guy]

Adaware and Spybot search and destroy, or try easycleaner.

also you should use McAffee it's smaller and does axactley the same as Norton

[sunsmountain]

Use Adaware, Spybot, or clean the registry yourself. I cannot help you with the latter, it differs per adware/spyware.

Most of all, stop using Internet Explorer! I've been having spyware/adware programs installing themselves no matter how safe i surfed with IE.

Now with Firefox i'm a happy surfer and i want to share her with you:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Never had a single spy/adware hack my homepage since. Until they develop spy or adware for firefox, of course, but they wont do that until FF's market share has risen to at least 40%. (its at 10% right now)

[Ginger]

Also id get trojan hunter- itl seek for trojans on your system and kill them

http://www.trojanhunter.com/

Also Antivir iv found to be a fantastic virus killer

www.free-av.com/

MOST IMPORTANTLY- get a decent firewall!!

Zone alarm is free and fantastic, the free version is totally sufficient for most needs

www.zonelabs.com/

ps- avoid Norton at all costs. Its crap, slows your system down and is only onestep removed from spyware itself. Die Norton Die!

[FURRY_BOOTS]

Also id get trojan hunter- itl seek for trojans on your system and kill them

http://www.trojanhunter.com/

Also Antivir iv found to be a fantastic virus killer

www.free-av.com/

MOST IMPORTANTLY- get a decent firewall!!

Zone alarm is free and fantastic, the free version is totally sufficient for most needs

www.zonelabs.com/

ps- avoid Norton at all costs. Its crap, slows your system down and is only onestep removed from spyware itself. Die Norton Die!

Hmmm, ive had my suspicions about this myself, symantic, slimantic more like, ive just paid a yearly subscription to them as well

also beesting, think about a proxy server, there are several for free.

[BeeSting]

Thanks helping out a brother in need.

I let you know how it turned out.

If the problem persists, should I wash out my system and start fresh with factory settings?

It even corrupted my media player and couple of other windows program.

[Oaty]

Panda Platinum is a free (for 30 days) antivirus program. I had spyware but the problem was the spyware was being installed by a virus. This killed all the spyware installing viruses and thus less spyware

[drone]

The combination of Ad-Aware and SpybotSD usually does the trick. Download them, install, and get the most recent updates. Run each one once (and use the "Immunize" feature of SpybotSD). This should clean up most of the offenders. Some spyware these days will reinstall while this is going on, so you might have to disconnect from the internet and run them again.

Ad-Aware SE Personal can be found here: http://www.lavasoft.de/

Spybot SD can be found here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/

Nastier cases may require registry edits, lets hope you don't have that problem.

Once clean, switch to Firefox or Mozilla, found here:http://www.mozilla.org/
IE is the bane of computer security, the only time you should use it is to run WindowsUpdate (and only then because you have no choice!).

What version of Windows are you running?

[BeeSting]

What version of Windows are you running?

Drone:

Thanks for your concern..... It's Windows XP.

[drone]

Drone:

Thanks for your concern..... It's Windows XP.

If you haven't already, do the Windows Update for ServicePack2. Since you have XP, you can turn on the built-in firewall. I think this blocks most of the IP ports, if you do online gaming you may have to do some investigation to make sure you don't have issues.

A decent anti-virus program, 2 spyware programs, built-in firewall, and a non-IE browser necessary to run on the internet these day. We complain about bugs from CA, not even going to get started on Microsoft (but I will). If you take a computer with a Windows XP SP1 fresh install, it lasts about 2 minutes on a broadband connection before it is 0wned. You don't even have the time to patch it before infection. And guess how a lot of new systems are shipped these days...

[BeeSting]

We complain about bugs from CA, not even going to get started on Microsoft (but I will). And guess how a lot of new systems are shipped these days...

Offhand, do you know if that will create problems with WoW? Reduce performance, perhaps?

[BeeSting]

Will these programs help fix the corrupted files?

[BeeSting]

Man, drone.... I really really appreciate your help. You don't know how stressed I was over this thing. So much so that I almost forgot all about the RTW bugs that I’ve been revolving my pathetic life around for the past month or so.

Do you know of anything that will fix my windows programs like media player for one.... gotta avoid them porn sites!

[BeeSting]

ah, not to leave out the others on this thread.... I equally appreciate their help a well. They were all informative and so quick to respond.

[Quillan]

AVG has a totally free version of their antivirus program that's pretty good. You can grab it at www.grisoft.com .

[drone]

If you have an older version of media player, maybe updating to the newer version from Windows Update might solve it. Otherwise, you may have to uninstall it, download the newest, and reinstall.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...ad/default.asp

Do you know what other files have been corrupted? You may be able to download individual .dll and .exe files from the Microsoft download center, but I doubt it. Your XP disk should have the originals as well (in the CAB files I think, it's been a while since I fresh installed XP). Of course, these might be older versions than files patched from WU. System files will have versions associated to them, you can see these with right-click->properties, then the version tab.

[BeeSting]

Drone:

i think i have the latest version of media player. How do I uninstall it?

[BeeSting]

Anyone??? I was unable to delete the folder either. Am I focked??????

I should just call for tech support instead of polluting this forum.

[drone]

Should be able to uninstall Media Player from the ControlPanel -> Add/Remove Programs. I'm pretty sure it's listed in there (at work now on a NT machine, so I can't verify).

[BeeSting]

Thanks all for helping me out!!!

In case you were curious about the result:

1. Spyware S&D -- Although it said it fixed the problem, but it seems it didn't destroy them as they are found again during latter scans.

2. Zone Alarm -- I can't believe this is free. Beats Norton five times over. Thanks, Ginger!!! I uninstalled Norton right away.

3. Mozilla -- Loved it! Great browser. Thanks for letting me know about this.

4. Media Player -- I've updated with the latest version, but it still didn't fix. I couldn't remove it with the "add/remove" tool.

You guys are great!!!

[drone]

Spybot usually always reports some "spyware" every time it runs, either cookies or something else (DCOM?, can't remember the specific). What is it saying still exists?

For your browsing pleasure, in Mozilla go to Edit->Preferences (assuming you haven't done this yet):

Under Privacy & Security->Popup Windows, set it to block.

Under Advanced->Scripts & Plugins, uncheck (at the least) the move/resize windows box, the raise/lower windows box, the hide status bar box, and the change status bar text box. Disable JavaScript for Mail & Newsgroups.

If you are using Mozilla as your email tool, under Privacy & Security->Images, check the box to not load remote images for Mail. This will block a trick spammers use to validate delivery.

Not too surprised about the Media Player, must be embedded into XP like a tick. Isn't this one of the reasons the EU sued M$? You may need to boot in safe mode and manually delete the folder. Once that is done, you might be able to reinstall, hopefully you won't need to muck with the registry. Good luck!