Help needed - Computer malware problem

Home computer | October 22, 2012 | self

[editor-surveyor]

My wife's Dell 640 laptop has picked up some malware that affects the display.

It shows up as faint rainbow colored horizontal bars across the screen, plus a circular, concentric, variable rainbow graphic in the upper left corner of the windows startup screen.

The machine is running XP professional.

The AVG software on the machine doesn't recognize it, nor did Trend Micro Housecall.

[Delmarksman]

Try f-secure.com free scanner.

[jennychase]

Install new graphic driver. Check whether nvdia and Microsoft (default) driver are conflicting.
Or check registry whether yellow mark is present.

[mmichaels1970]

I did that one better, I booted the machine in MS DOS 6.2, and ran a complex high resolution AutoCAD rendering, and it displays perfectly.

Impressive. Then I'd suspect a rootkit and try combofix. If you can pull off running AutoCAD rendering from an MS Dos 6.2 boot, combofix shouldn't intimidate you at all.

[Bikkuri]

I was going to recommend the same thing.. I was thinking the same as others here (hardware issue) until I read all of the details.. A screenshot would quickly tell all of us whether or not it is a hardware issue.

If it is maleware, I would highly recommend booting from a Linux Live CD and checking for virus’/trojans from there.. MUCH more reliable ;)

[DarthFuzball]

Saw this on someone else's machine a few weeks ago. Similar to the old custom cursors from a few years ago.

If the only thing, (and I mean the ONLY thing) that is affected is the blue title bar for each and every window and/or dialog box or alert message box, then the problem is a gradient setting in the current windows theme.

This would show as a colour change going from left to right on the title bar of the window and when you re-size or move the window the colour change follows the window.

Fix --- right click on desktop background and select display properties. navigate the tabs till you find the current theme. (probably listed as custom theme). Pick Windows classic theme or some similar name from the drop down list.

[editor-surveyor]

On my wife’s machine the desktop is also affected (horizontal bands of faded rainbow colors) and there is a series of graphics with very complex designs that show up only on the startup screen, in the upper left corner.

The first one to display was a drawing of a gear with a splined center and bevel-cut teeth around the outer circumference, like someone’s high school drafting project.

[w1andsodidwe]

Hook the laptop up to a monitor and see if the display is OK. I am betting hardware issue.

[TexasRepublic]

Turn the computer on and when the DELL logo appears press F12 this will get you into Diagnostics where you can test the display. If it is a malware problem it will go way while in diagnostics, if it is a hardware problem it will stay.

I don't know if all Dells have diagnostics built into BIOS, but that sounds like the best suggestion I've seen on this thread. Another good suggestion is running a Linux demo CD. If both of those work fine, then I would consider that proof Windows has been infected.