Has anyone had any experience with this pest? (Also known as Antivirus 8). I am trying to help a friend a fair distance away get rid of it and there are lots of instructions as per this
I would be happy to follow the instructions on my own computer but I don’t want to have to walk her through it if it can be avoided, so I was wondering if Trend Housecall would fix it.
I thought of the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool but this thing is not listed as one it takes care of.
I can’t remember if I have dealt with that particular beast in particular but I have removed loads of rogue AV applications and as a general rule you can’t remove them by installing or running software whilst the virus is active. Usually the virus needs disabling first manually before you start running AV scans.
I would advise your friend to run TDSSKiller first then use autoruns (or msconfig) to disable the autostart of the virus. Once that is done you can try booting into safe mode with networking and install and run malwarebytes. Beyond that it may require booting into an out-of-windows environment to remove the virus.
Yes- Trend didn’t do the job so now she will start it in safe mode and use the Malware Bytes program.
Interestingly, she is also having lots of problems with some Cupid application on FB which seems to be confusing her with some other person and she keeps getting some rather lurid messages. I think her teenage son visited a few naughty sites and there could be other nasties involved.
Yes- well I have no idea if allowing a Facebook application access to one persons account ona laptop will then enable that application to access every user account on that laptop. I would think not but it strikes me as a coincidence that all these things are happening at once.