Hard To Work With Spyware

[CheckProgs 0]

I have a virus or a sort which disallows me to open the following things..exe's / .lnk'sI cannot even open my nortan and that didn't even detect it.I need major help.My OS is Windows XP Professional.

[levimage 0]

What web browser do you use. I remember recently I had a client who was experiencing the same thing. The Anti Virus and Spyware detection software came up with nothing. It turns out something was wrong with the Internet Explorer. I knew she didn't have virus cause the problem started happening after a blackout. I could not pin point what files were missing or corrupted but believe it was due to the power outage and Windows XP was not shutdown. Since she was online when the power went out, her pc may have been reading or writing from the hard disk at that very moment.We updated IE to IE7 and some updates via Windows Update. The problem was solved. I didn't get a chance to follow up with what the errors were. Oh well

[yordan 10]

Is your problem solved now ?
Effectively, looks like a virus/worm problem. sircam has this kind of behaviour, have a look here :
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/311446
Also, before doing that, did you try booting in failsafe mode ? Does norton still not work ?

[CheckProgs 0]

No, I did not find the solution. Yes, I did try to booting, and it still won't work.Also I'm using Firefox, but to this point I doubt that is very valid to help me fix my problem.

Edited October 26, 2008 by CheckProgs (see edit history)

[yordan 10]

I see a temporary solution.First of all, create a backup image of your c: disk, use norton ghost or a similar backup tool so if I told you a stupid thing you can go back by restoring your disk image backup.Seems that your network is broken inside your windows install, I would try to repair it.Boot on your Microsoft Windows install disk.Boot like if you would like to do a fresh install, with a small detail.Windows will ask you where you want to install, choose your current c: disk.then, windows will ask you if you want to do a fresh install or if you want to perform a repair install.Choose a repair install. It will last as long as a full install because it will re-load a lot of things from the CD distro, but it will keep your user's passwords and main installations.After the last reboot, your network should work correctly.RegardsYordan

[docduke 0]

yordan's repair install proposal is a good idea. I have tried that for a friend who had a lot of viruses in his computer, thanks to grandchildren who liked to download lots of stuff. It worked well for him, and he didn't think he lost anything, but that is the risk -- the reinstall may remove or overwrite something you don't want to lose.

 

If you are concerned about that risk, I have another suggestion that you can try without making any changes on your computer. That is, assuming you know how to make it boot from a CD.

 

I use Avira antivirus. Their RescueCD is a small, bootable CD that contains an antivirus scanner. Because it is a bootable CD, your computer operating system is not running when it is, so no virus can interfere with it. Avira is #1 according to About.com, so it is very generous of them to make a free version available for personal use.

 

I usually download it directly from rescuecd.iso, but you can get more information and alternatives from the Avira download page. In either case, burn the ISO image into a CD and boot it. It should do a thorough scan of your computer, and tell you what it finds. You can also set it to try to remedy any infections, though I have not tried that. (Fortunately, never needed to!)

 

Hope this helps!

 

docduke