Real rookie mistake - opened attachment

Quackles

I have a few email accounts, I was deleting the rubbish out of one when I noticed a mail in it which originated from my own gmail account, a seperate account. It had an attachment in it called 8.zip. I frequently email myself stuff to remember to look at it later, so I downloaded the attachment and ran a virus scan on it with the antivirus software on the machine, eScan. It came up nothing. I opened the zip file, it was a zipped exe, 19_04_2005.exe.. I scanned this within the zip file, again, nothing. So (and here's where I should have known better), I ran it. It did nothing, but a notepad file opened that just said "Sorry.".. What have I done?? I don't notice any difference to the PC, but I'm afraid to restart it!! Going to go and do an online scan with McAfee now, but does anyone have an idea what I've let myself in for? I could see this happening, I'm such a moronic foolio...

vector

If is really imporant
-kill the power
-mirror the hard drive to another empty hd (so you have your unrelplacable data)
-put hard drive back in
-boot up
-disconnect internet cable
-run offline antivirus scan & adware scan
-if it is messy format, and reinstall windows
-copy personal files from other hd
-reinstall crappy windows apps that wont work cos their dlls are gone!

oh dammit you say online scam, so you need to be online

em forget it

Quackles

Its not THAT important anyway, thats way too much like hard work, and it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to rebuild this PC.. actually, could do it some good. McAfee has already found two bagle variants, so that was probably it - and 4 exe files were modified/created around the time I ran that stupid file. I'm doing an online scan, because if this experience has taught me anything, its that my AV software isn't worth tuppence. Stupid eScan, no wonder its so cheap.. Anyway, its only my work PC I'll call the IT person! Oh no, wait.. thats me.. damn..

vector

Speaking of calling the IT person, if there was one you would have to call him, otherwise his union would shout at demarcation

Quackles

Demarcation shmemarcation... I love it when others do my work for me. Besides, whats a union?

smorton

that showed up on my comuter the other day. stoopid sister downloaded it. doesnt seem to have done any harm but it puts a value in the registry to tell it to start with the computer. get autostart manager:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/autostartmgr.html

delete the two things that tell the virus to start (i think it was 2). then go and delete the exe file the values are supposed to start. problem sorted

hostyle

Quackles wrote:

I'm doing an online scan, because if this experience has taught me anything, its that my AV software isn't worth tuppence.

Download and install AVG, and update it every so often. Its saved my mum a lot of hassle - because she recieved spoofed emails from me containing malware payloads.