Yet another virus question

CrowdedHouse

Asking a lot I know but anyone able to hazard a guess at what virus I've got on my work laptop....

Symtoms are - I can't use 'Run' i.e can't put in 'cmd' 'regedit' etc. just nothing happens.
Can't open Task manager - it flashes up briefly and then minimises to the taskbar and as soon as I move the mouse pointer over it,it disappears.

Similarly can't run Norton AV (corporate) or AVG in normal mode(again the icons in the taskbar disappear and nothing happens when main icons are selected).Both will run in safe mode but neither finds anything. Search and destroy hasn't found anything unusual either.

System is XP pro
Most functions appear to be working normally

Just curious as it will be going for a reload tomorrow.

daywalker

could be any of the major ones going around at the moment, the symptoms you describe are common to a lot of these, Here is a program that i use in virus removal, i find it very useful

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

it checks for the most common viruses "in the wild" at the mo and removes them, though it cant help you if you have a virus that is not in its definitions

yoyo

Could be anything really, try installing trojan hunter trial, go to the install directory and rename the main exe to something like "cool", that way itll bypass the viruses blacklist, run it, its a very good tool to get past trojans which root themselves into your pc, I had a prorat virus which did just that and this detected it,

Now download kaspersky, if the torjan hunter picked up nothing well rename the kaspersky exe like above and run a full kaspersky scan, not a very good stand alone anti virus kaspersky is i dont think but it has excellent detection capabilities,

Lastly, remove norton as it wont protect you at all, and get AVG Anti Virus free, much better, trust me!!!

Nick

BTW all these links can be found in google

mad m

Had similar experience with a mates Pc lastnight,I went into safe mode(F8) while starting up. As soon are you are in you should be able to get Run/Task manager. I went into safe mode also because the virus wouldnt let me install Mcafee 2006 suite,and once I was in safe mode I installed Mcafee and rebooted and it found 45 unwanted programs and 24 or so trojans/worms....

Id rather format/re-install Xp for him at this point.

Goodluck

commited

www.ewido.net - great free virus & malware scanner.
Also try the online scanner on kaspersky

CrowdedHouse

Thanks for all the info and suggestions folks.

By some quirk when I booted this morning AVG was able to scan in normal mode and it found and healed 2 Trojans,everything is back to normal now.

AVG 2 Norton 0

(BTW not sure but this may have been the first full restart it got since I loaded AVG yesterday, i.e.complete switch off/on as opposed to restart from XP menu.Does this make a difference ?)

daywalker

CrowdedHouse wrote:

(BTW not sure but this may have been the first full restart it got since I loaded AVG yesterday, i.e.complete switch off/on as opposed to restart from XP menu.Does this make a difference ?)

not usually, but with the fact that you were infected with a virus may have had something to do with it.