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.
All this, just to read Jewish World Review (or any other Web site)? What a waste.
Get a Mac and lower your blood pressure.
That said there is NO substitute for backing up your important files like digital photos. External hard drives and flash drives are inexpensive and can save a lot of grief if for some reason you lose your hard drive. Cloud storage is also available and as much as 5GB can often be obtained for free. I like to have my back up files stored off premises in case of fire or in this area tornadoes. I have some of my most important files backed up on flash drives and stored in my safety deposit box at the bank. I also store my old photo negatives and irreplaceable family photos in my safety deposit box.
You can turn off cookies for Drudge and it will still work.
Do NOT use AVG. It totally crashed my computer. Their support tech was no help. Had to buy another computer.
“If you really want to be free of this you may have to format the disk and reinstall windows from disk.”
There is absolutely no reason to do this.
There are many programs out there that will get rid of trojans and viruses.
There are other things, such as editing the registry in Safe Mode as well as restoring the registry from a backup, that will get rid of the entries.
As stated before, if nothing else works then try Combo Fix or another one called ‘Smitfraudfix’ which works well.
I have never had to re-format and re-install Windows because of a virus or trojan.
And I’ve worked on a lot of systems as a tech for years.
Anytime something like that pops up, you control + alt + delete and then shut the process down under the applications tab in your process viewer.
Get root !
ping for advice later
Re””I have gotten the same thing a couple of times on my computer and my wife’s. I went to Bleepingcomputer.com, to their virus page and selected the one with the same name as the one hitting on your computer. Then, to shorten the process go straight down the page to where you can load Rkill onto a thumbdrive. Stick the thumbdrive into the affected computer and run rkill and it’s cleaned. Then run Malwarebytes and go back to your normal life. It is so easy, only a few clicks, and you’re done in just a few minutes.
This has worked for me three times. Good luck.”
I second this approach. The one and only infection I got since the early 1990’s was cured in this manner.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/
I got infected with antivir solution pro:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-antivir-solution-pro
I see many good solutions already posted. With over 3 decades in the IT business I have settled on a few utilities to use to combat attacks like this. We use Symantec Endpoint Protection at work along with Malwarebyte and Hijackthis. I use Avast at home as well as the other 2 programs.
This may sound simple by when one of my users encounters one of these fake programs I tell them to reach around to the back of the computer and unplug it and then call me. What you are seeing is basically the scout who will call his friends after it secures itself within your system. It is the friends that cause the most damage. It doesn’t matter if you click no or the red X all of them are set to let the thing into your computer. The damage done by pulling the plug is most times nothing. This approach has served me well and saved me countless hours rebuild workstations.
What good does running your anti-virus scans in safe mode do? Doesn't it just do the same function in regular mode? And is that something one should do on a regular basis even tho you don't have any identifiable problem? Thanks
Bookmark
When you boot into safe mode you aren't loading everything and therefore the programs you use to find the nastie's can do their job. Most times once that bad boys load themselves they also protect themselves.
Someone told me to run disc cleanup twice monthly, to keep things running smoothly. I tried to set it up as a scheduled task, but it asks for my password. I don’t remember ever having a password, except for when I bought the computer 6 years ago. And I’m afraid to run it if it won’t let me back on my computer without the password after running cleanup.
Several of you suggested to restart in safe mode. I've done it, run MAM and am about to finish running MSE. So far, so good. Thank you, every body. And this time I've taken notes, so next time I'll have plenty of ideas. THANK YOU from the bottom of my hard drive.
I got introduced to bleepingcomputer by a FReeper some time ago, but do not recall who it was. I have not had to pay anyone to work on my stuff since then.
see posts #34 and #50
I’ve had good results fixing this for friends by using the “system restore” utility if they had that enabled. Otherwise I have used “Malwarebytes” or have reinstalled the operating system along with formatting the hard drive.
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