Help my wife's computer Please? Long,Long,Long...

Factual Questions
1

Spec’s first,

Sony Vaio Laptop VPCF136FM

Win7 x64 bit

Intel ® Core ™ i7 cpu Q 740 @1.73GHz 1.73GHz

6 GB ram

Now for the fixes applied: Ran AntiMalwarbytes, and Microsoft Security Essentials. One hit from MBAM for a tweak in the start menu.

Made sure Windows update was all up to date, drivers ect.

Attempted to fix Vaio Care Updater. still don’t think that is working.

Uninstalled and reinstalled drivers for the mouse ect.

Now for the symptoms… First notice was the sidebar gadgets all go to 20% Opacity, taskbar, even though locked and unhidden, will become auto hide and disappear. If you can get it back, you cannot select or L/R click anything, open windows will ignore the mouse as well, some switching can be done using program manager, unplug the usb mouse and replug so the drivers will reinstall. Note, the computer is not locked up, the mouse cursor will move around the screen, but hovering over files, taskbar, open windows will not bring them to focus, and clicking does nothing.

Open FF and do a search from google for the symptoms, a page of selections comes up, click on one, and the whole thing goes right back to google. The pages just disappear.

Found nothing of use on searches performed on other computers.

Just looked, MBam’s launcher is missing from the desktop, start menu, taskbar, and from it’s own folder. It was fully installed with shortcuts and I did not uninstall. The rest of the files seem to be there.
I think she has some malware somewhere, but full scans did not find anything.
If you could point me in the right direction for some idea of what I am looking for, maybe you know of a virus that causes these symptoms and how to find them and DESTROY it.

If not, what are my chances of nuking from orbit, I have full install disks or the recovery console full of bloatware that doesn’t even seem to work.

I’ve done this to a Hp Compaq and found the experience a bit draining, finding those proprietary drivers, getting them to install ect.
This is the fourth computer I will have nuked in the last two weeks, I a sorely getting tired of this. If this does turn out to be a software clash or something simple, I would be so happy! I doubt it though.

2

Only once I had to take her down to square one. Finding help works better. Log into Safe Mode and run your antivirs. I use Avira and Avast!, which probably can’t be found outside of Safe Mode. And keep asking here, because they are smarter than I.

3

I work in computer support and I have seen malware actively direct you to the wrong places or stop you from getting to the right place altogether. The bad guys know you all use Malwarebytes and such and often program to circumvent them or make it hard for you to get the stuff you want.

Try this link to get the right version (it is a CNet page…if you end up elsewhere you have problems).

Also, click on START then type “MSCONFIG” (without quotes) in the “Search programs and files” bar at the bottom-left of the menu.

Click on the “Startup” tab and uncheck anything that looks dubious in there. This does not remove anything from your system. It merely prevents it from running at startup. There may be something in the background causing problems. Many things are necessary for proper sound and video and so on. You kinda have to get a feel for what is probably crap and what is necessary. Unchecking things will not harm anything…if something like sound stops working go back in and re-tick the box. You need to re-boot each time you do this for changes to take effect.

Basically you want to stop everything that is unnecessary to the basic function of the PC. This list has a way of growing and mostly it just slows things down and may cause problems.

Also, download CCleaner and install and run it. PCs can get wonky as the cache fills up in bowsers. Note that CCleaner can delete saved passwords for websites and such. This is optional but if you are not careful you will not “auto” login to various sites and have to fart around with getting passwords back if you do not remember them. Again, you can stop CCleaner from doing that but you have to pay attention to it.

Also run CCleaner’s registry fixer. Have it make a backup then have it clean the registry. You need to run that several times in a row till nothing shows up.

Finally, there is always booting into Safe Mode which can help in removing malware/viruses. I also hope you have an antivirus program running. Malwarebytes is great but does not prevent infection.

Let us know how it goes. Good luck!

4

Forgot…link to CCleaner: Thanks for downloading CCleaner

5

Um, beyond that you can reach this site, listen to Whack-A-Mole. Fighting these bastards may not formally be fighting the obvious battles, but those friends suggest.

Getting snarky, for a second: If those files were so important they should’ve been backed up. In my case that would’ve been several years ago. Regular backups started seeming superfluous around 1995, when hardware got better. The operable phrase: Hardware still sucks. So does software. Backup in any and all formats available to you. :shrug:

6

MBAM is reinstalled and now scanning in safe mode again, will check out the CCCleaner tomorrow.
I gotta go get some sleep for now.

Nothing to worry about the backups, it is just a hassle Formatting and starting over. Seems you can easily take a whole day to redo all those updates, even with the Service pack on disk.

Of course, I was doing vista 32 bit on an ancient laptop just the other day, and I don’t have that on disk.
The machine just kept dropping updates and taking forever to fail them.

7

FWIW CCLeaner does its thing very fast (seconds to a minute or two depending on the PC).

Malwarebytes is MUCH slower (albeit fast for what it does compared to many AV programs).

They are different but point being is you can do CCleaner in minutes while you brush your teeth for bed.

8

Malware messing with your taskbar?

Neh, this is more likely some crapware by Sony that is malfunctioning.

Maybe something wrong with some custom keys, try uninstalling the driver for that.

9

May well be. I created an account for me on her computer so I can install updates and programs as needed. I just noticed that my account is not suffering the same things she is. So I deleted and remade her account and hopefully that fixes it. Malwarebytes came up zilch, in safe mode. Haven’t bothered with CCCleaner yet.

10

To be honest this doesn’t sound like a malware issue but sounds like it could be an issue with windows. Possibly a previous virus, trojan or malware could have affected the windows copy. I would suggest backing up your data and doing a repair with your windows CD if this does not work then a format and re-install of windows will cure it. Also there is a very good thread on how to get rid of malware on your pc, and some other handy tips in the General question area

11

Killed her account and re opened a fresh one. Played with it for over a half hour and no problems, even brought up some gadgets.

Later tonight when she is rebuilding her bookmarks and other settings we will find out for sure, It usually started acting up within minutes though.

I am hopeful.

12

Assuming not a virus: Some of her files might have gotten corrupted, causing this behavior. We had trouble with our old computer - some software wasn’t behaving, we couldn’t do updates etc. We think there were some system files on bad disk sectors or something. I reinstalled the OS and it was much better.

However: malware CAN affect just one user - we’re just done cleaning up such a situation. My daughter got to a bad website or something, and we got a rootkit. It was trying to download trojans etc., which AVG was catching, but neither AVG nor MalwareBytes caught the rootkit itself. So just seeing nothing in those programs doesn’t mean it’s clean.

I wound up going to the Malwarebytes forum and asking for help; they walked me through ComboFix etc. and killed the bug.

It never affected any other user, I guess because my daughter’s account had limited access.

Anyway, if it misbehaves, I’d suggest going to one of the forums that specializes in clearing such bugs.

13

As above, I created a new account for her, and I played a couple of games, surfed online, watched a netflix movie. No problem for 3 or four hours. She had it back last night and I believe she watched netflix most of the night.

Tonight she turned it on and it went flop on her, I just finished rebooting and checking her mouse settings. Surfed the net for 10 minutes loaded netflix and started her show.

So now apparently her computer is in cahoots with me to drive her insane.
No good deed goes unpunished I see.

14

Re-format.

15

Starting to sound like a classic PEBKAC error.