Do I have some kind of Malware?

Factual Questions
1

While I’m browsing, this image pops up randomly:

It looks bogus to me but PC Tools Spyware Doctor fails to identify a threat.

I’m also getting random re-directs from Google search results.

Thanks

2

Yes, you are infected.

3

Malware bytes will take care of it quickly and easily and it’s free!

4

The giveaway is that you are running XP and that is a Vista-style window.

Ad-aware by Lavasoft is a good one, and it is free. The free version needs you to initiate a scan, and the paid version will scan automatically.

5

Well, that and the stilted English. (“Poorly translated” stilted, and not just “written by programmers” stilted.)

6

Yes. It looks very similar to one I was infected with earlier in the year that called itself ‘Personal Antivirus’. It kept trying to scam me out of $60 to ‘activate’ it, and when I wouldn’t, it effectively locked my computer up and wouldn’t llow me to access any websites other than my e mail. I tried using the free virus/malware services and it did no good. I had to take the computer into the shop to get it removed.

Good luck!

7

When you download programs like Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (free version) and they can’t get rid of it, try running the program from safe mode. Some malware will stop anti-malware from doing it’s job. Usually running it from safe mode will help.

8

Thanks for all your suggestions.
I spent the last 6 hours battling this thing but I think I beat it.
It took a few tries but Malware Bytes finally detected an infection it called: “ESQULzcounter, Trojan Dropper”. It insisted that it was removing the inection on reboot but in fact, It never did.
Further research led me to a tool called SysProt which detected a rootkit infection. The final blow was dealt by “ComboFix”.

I hope I never have to go through that grief again. :smack:

9

Creating a limited user account works very well for me and my users.

10

[computer shop owner hat on]

The big hammer around here is mounting the drive via usb adapter to a machine with several virus tools up and running on it. We have a machine that we can reimage back to fresh load with all AV apps in place in like 10 min just as an AV tool. The AV apps operating from a clean OS will splatterkill most of the nasties on an infected drive in short order. We usually hit it with

AVG
Malwarebytes
Spybot s&d
superantispyware
kaspersky

we also have virtualized copies of several AV apps that can just be run from a flash drive.

if that doesent kill it, we try a repair install of windows, this sometimes cracks the defenses of a few nasties and allows a cleaner kill.