Antivirus xp help please

Samhlaigh · 25-10-2008 02:09PM #1

Hi to all,
I'm one of the silly few who left that stupid antivirus xp 2009 load itself on to my laptop.
I've been in a total panic for the past 8hrs trying my best to rid it from my machine, going through the step by step processes advised. So I loaded the malwarebytes anti- malware and this got rid of many corrupt files. But remnants of the virus are still evident. like I cant open various programmes, including firefox, photoshop autocad all vital, as these are holding various projects that I am working on hostage.

I was just wondering if any one could enlighten me as to how I could retrieve these programmes...is it a case that the virus has changed a simple setting....or is there no hope and I should just pack in all this sh**e and head off to sunnier climates and become a beach bum!?

Thanks for any help in advance

biologikal · 26-10-2008 04:04PM

I had this a few months back, and in the end, re-installing the OS (XP in my case) from scratch was the quickest solution. I think it messes with so many settings in the registry, that the only way you can fully recover from it is to go back to a good restore point (if you use restore), or reinstall the OS. Advise on the internet seems to point the same way, though you will see lots different advise on how to clean it up, so if restoring or re-installing doesn't appeal to you, give a few of them a go.

Important thing about it is to realise how it got onto your computer, and minimise the chance of it coming back again; it really is the most annoying virus/malware/whatever I've ever come across (I had symptoms like google search hijacks, and faked windows firewall disabling, so when I tried "re-enabling" the firewall, it was opening a port, or whatever, and the legit antivirus I had immediately detected virii coming in).

Peeps who devised this stuff need to be steamrolled.

EDIT: Have a read here: http://swoofware.com/blog/2008/06/29/xp-antivirus-2008-and-antivirus-2009-are-evil/

You might find some ideas in there. As for preventing in the future, one thing I see most commonly suggested is to switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer.

Thomas_S_Hunterson · 26-10-2008 04:11PM

+1 on the reinstall windows

Samhlaigh · 26-10-2008 04:47PM

Thanks a mil for the advice nice to have the second opinon on it like, spent the day trying to sort it with no luck yesterday such a waste of time.
Here's hoping I've been good at backing all my work up!:)

Podge2k7 · 26-10-2008 04:51PM

I got it about 3 months ago!I put my music and stuff on a external hdd and reinstalled xp and now its perfest again!

biologikal · 26-10-2008 05:08PM

Samhlaigh wrote: »

Thanks a mil for the advice nice to have the second opinon on it like, spent the day trying to sort it with no luck yesterday such a waste of time.
Here's hoping I've been good at backing all my work up!:)

Should be safe enough to put in a USB stick and copy any important documents/files/images onto it. I don't think there is any danger of the "plague" hopping onto the USB stick.

You mightn't be so inclined, but after you get the OS re-installed, up-to-date with SP's/patches, and all your regular programs/applications installed, it might be a good idea to get ghosting application, and make an image of this "current, up-to-date" state. If you ever need to recover, you can use this to recover the system to how it was, literally in minutes; no need to go looking for CD's/DVDs/serial numbers/etc. I use free software called Maxtor Maxblast to do this for me. Obviously you need to backup any new documents, but as long as you know where they are, it's not a difficult job.

Antivirus xp help please

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