Help! I've been hijacked!

Oh, yeah. This sucker has been rebooted to within an inch of its life. I’ve run Spybot, AVG, a[sup]2[/sup], and the toolbar still says “VIRUS ALERT!” and I still get random new windows opening in my browser, even with Firefox (which is what I’m using now.) I ran all the anti stuff in Safe Mode, then rebooted. The computer is a Dell, so I have all the discs that came with it.

Time to start burning some more back-up disks, I guess.

If you don’t mind spending $80 or so, a USB hard drive is a lot easier to back up to than a bunch of CDs/DVDs.

That’s going to be the plan. The basic docs and such are already backed up. I just need to back up one hellacious amount of music.

I just wish I could retrieve my desktop and such. Drag and drop is so much easier than the alternatives. I can’t even get the My Computer icon anymore.

Oh, well. I didn’t plan on eating this month anyway. :smiley:

If you have the one that says VIRUS ALERT! down by the clock, I guarantee MalWareBytes will remove it. Download it on another computer to a flash drive, and install it from there.

Must…resist…shilling…for…Steven Jobs…

Stranger

How much music do you need to back up?

Get a 300-gig external drive for about $200 and a $29.95 USB adaptor/power supply kit so you can just plug the bare drive straight into your computer. I did this to back up all my stuff from my old PC, and then later when I got the Mac, I was able to copy it all back in again! Much less annoying than burning DVDs or re-ripping CDs.

The type of adaptor depends on the type of connector on the hard drive. Newer drives use SATA; older drives use ATA/IDE connectors. Many adaptor kits come with both.

My old drive was IDE, so I also had to fiddle with the Master/Slave/Cable Select jumper on the drive (documentation on the adaptor said nothing about this). But when I got it working, it just showed up as a connected USB drive on the desktop.

Connect the adaptor cable to the drive, connect the power supply cable to power it up, then plug the USB into the computer, in that order. USB requires that the connecting device be powered on so that it can be recognised.

Edit: USB 2.0 is a LOT faster than USB 1.x for copying data, too.

That finally did it, I think. Firefox handled the download smoothly, and MalWareBytes found 29 things to destroy. The reboot cleared the “VIRUS ALERT!” from my toolbar, and I have my clock back. My Start Menu is back to normal as well. Thanks, FI. Thanks to everybody else, too. From now on it’s Firefox. I have to use a PC to be compatible with school, Stranger. But thanks for the kind thoughts. :smiley:

I would recommend running SuperAntiSpyware as well, just to be sure you got everything. If that comes up clean, you are good to go.

Yeah, I have to use a Windows machine for desktop stuff at work, too. And everytime we have a major infection things grind to a halt until i.t. “pushes” a half-dozen updates across the global network. Then they follow that up telling us how great Windows is, and try to quash every attempt to use Linux-based servers for webservers, run-boxes, computing clusters, et cetera, even when it costs more and does less. Talk about pulling the temple down on our heads. I’m just glad to be in a closed off little group that has limited contact with the rest of the world. Siberia ain’t so bad as long as you bring a case of your own Ukrainian spiced horilka with you.

Stranger

Clean as a whistle. The only thing it found were a few of my wife’s cookies. Thanks again to everyone. I’m seriously thinking of installing the program we use at school, called DeepFreeze. Nothing gets by that sucker!

Good move switching to Firefox. If you don’t download and install stuff like mouse cursors and toolbars, you should have no further malware problems. I don’t even run anti-virus, just a firewall.

Shill all you want. I own a Macbook pro as well. :wink:

Unfortunately, I still need the PC for muh games.

ETA: I highly recommend the Firefox addon called NoScript. The initial configuration may be a pain, but you’ll be safe from keyloggers and other malware.

No, please do.
Because if Macs were to be more popular than Winboxes, then the fuckers writing virus, malware ASF would switch their efforts to destroying Macboxes and I wouldn’t have to spend as much money protecting my machine.

Heh. I have my gripes about Apple and Jobs, too, and I think OS X/Darwin is inherently more secure than Windows OSs with the possible caveat of the hyperrestrictive but obnoxious Vista (although I think OS X still needs a more secure default configuration), but the hardware is generally much better integrated and OS and utitlity features are implemented in a more consistent manner. If someone would make a modern version of the BeBox with a true next generation operating system that worked, I would certainly consider it…even if it were made by Microsoft.

Stranger