computer problems - instable system?

esperanza

Last night i was working away on my laptop as usual when suddenly my internet connection broke down.

I restarted of course, and when I clicked on properties of my connection, i saw that the octets received were a mere 100 or so, ie a very slowed down connection. Same things happened to me b4 xmas, and it was a Trojan - or not even sure, it turned out to be a .dll key from Spyware Sweeper - don't trust this programme!! In any case, the Blue Screen of Death visited me several times.

This time I thought I was rid of it after having reformated but I had my suspicions that my system was not stable when a couple of days ago my cursor started blinking and windows was slow to start. (could the cause also be some executable file in my computer??)

after restarting, i took a look at my C drive which contained only 326Mo free - a drastic reduction. (i had 22% free before that). I had a partition for my data. It seemed as if something ate up my hard drive thus preventing my internet connection from working properly.
(ps. I had windows intsalled on 10 giga, ok?)

I decided in the end to reformat my system and so far so good, but am afraid of installing .exe files.

In terms of anti-virus, spyware etc. here are the progs i had running:

Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall 4 (Free version)
Avast Anti Virus (free version)
AVG anti spyware (30-day trial version)
Trojan Remover
I have all the latest Windows Updates.


My questions in order of priority are:

1. What could have eaten up my C drive so suddenly which - apparently - cut off my internet connection?

2. Is it possible that .exe files do carry viruses/trojans? (such as was the case with Spyware Sweeper. When I did a scan with Trojan Remover one of its keys was detected as the culprit in my system).

3. Should i not install any of the progs that have .exe files carrying warnings?

4. Is there a free program I can use to check the stability of my system?

5. Should i buy the professional versions of anti-spyware, a-virus and so on to be sure my system is protected in full?

6. Is it possible that my hard drive was permanently damaged by the Trojan/ culprit .exe /.dll file last time around?

Please, help! I'm desperate!!!!

8T8

May or may not be a virus I would check the systems RAM & hard drive with diagnostic tools to rule those out first.

Use Memtest+ for the RAM if the laptop does not have a Floppy drive download the ISO image & burn to CD with ImgBurn.

As for the HD well you really need to know the make and go to the makers website and get their diagnostic tools. A quick test is DTemp which reads the SMART status (if enabled) of the HD and can give you an idea if something is wrong (lights all green = drive okay).

As for anti-spyware get rid of AVG anti-spyware & download Spybot Search & Destroy and when prompted to enable the resident "TeaTimer" which will block spyware like an anti-virus program running in the background.

Give the system a full scan with spybot as well.

esperanza

my computer was acting weird again this morning( cursor blinking), humming noise, etc.

after a scan with Trojan Hunter this is what I found:

Found trojan file: C:\System Volume Information\_restore{D475D116-DF88-45C4-8BF3-9AB6FC089BD7}\RP12\A0001364.dll (TrojanDownloader.Agent.989)

I've just put the culprit .dll file in quarantine, is this ok?

what is the cause of this? is my firewall (kerio free version) not secure enough,

8T8

Did you do any of the above that I mentioned what where the results ?

A humming noise is unlikely to be caused by a trojan or virus it could be a combination of pending hardware failure and viruses.

That trojan that you found in the system restore cache where snapshots of the OS reside I don't know what your doing that is allowing these to get in if you say you formatted the system and did a clean install.


This is what I would do;
* Do the tests I mentioned above.

* Disconnect your internet connection from the machine.

* Uninstall Kerio and go back to the regular Windows firewall it works just fine.

* Right click the Avast blue globe icon, select program settings and untick the box for "enable skins for simple user interface". Now close that and run the main Avast program when it loads, click settings and schedule boot-time scan, tick the box for "scan archive files" & click schedule. Now reboot the system and Avast will scan the system before XP loads completely allowing it to catch anything that may be be loading at boot (delete anything it finds).

* With the Avast scan finished run Spybot with it's TeaTimer running and do a full system scan to see what it finds.

* Lastly run a full system scan with Avast again in Windows & Trojan Hunter to see if anything else comes up.

If everything turns up clean after that reconnect your net connection and see what happens, do another scan a few hours later or the next day.