The worst virus evarrrr!

Factual Questions
1

Looks like I said one to many nasty things about Scott Walker and the Koch Brothers. Seriously, shortly after my last piercing, insightful and utterly accurate rant about the events in WI, KABLOOEY! My machine locks up, I have to shut it down, and upon re-boot I can’t open any programs, search any drives, etc.

Clicking on desktop shortcuts brings a propmt “what program do you want to open this program with?” Well duh, I’m clicking on Firefox, so how about that? I can browse to Firefox and choose it, but it is an endless loop and the thing never opens. Choosing ‘search the internet’ has no effect. Same with every.other.program.

I’ve been to the 'dope de-bugging page and tried a few things, but the trouble is that I can’t run anything. The anti-sypware options look pretty nifty, but going to those sites and clicking on the download options (Do you want to Save or Run this program… run of course!) puts me back in the same endless loop. I can’t run anything!

Ok, I managed to get into Safe Mode and run AVG anti-virus. After an hour of scanning it found one virus… on my beta drive. Problem NOT fixed. I suppose I could download the other programs and try to run them in Safe Mode too, but my gut feeling is that my OS has been jacked. That is, it isn’t a virus per se, but a destruction of some key element of my OS that isn’t going to show up as a virus at all. I dunno.

By booting up my Windows disk I managed to find a ‘back way’ to searching my drives, onto Internet Explorer and have returned here to rant (I thought there was a ‘repair Windows’ option, but I am not seeing it). I bought a new hard drive expecting to install Windows onto it and move on from there (and holy moly, for $50 I can get a hard drive that I don’t think NASA could have obtained for any price 10 years ago), but so far my machine isn’t detecting the damn thing. Maybe my motherboard is too old (at least 5 years, I don’t think I even have the box anymore, and can’t access Control Panel AFAIK) and it can’t handle a 3Gb/sec SATA drive, so I will have to shut everything down, tear it back apart, install the little jumper to trick it into being a 1.5 Gb/sec drive… I dunno, we’ll see.

I have questions, but I don’t know what to ask. Maybe someone can suggest a solution that doesn’t involve staying up all night playing with hardware and re-installing Windows. My ability to ‘run’ programs is gone, and I am not sure I can re-create my ‘back door’ onto internet explorer- it was one of a dozen things I tried. So for now, ‘dope, it was nice knowing you, alas, the Koch brothers’ evil is too much!

2

Some viruses corrupt the .exe command, having it run through their own command interpreter. The workaround is to download Malwarebytes from another computer and put it onto your flash drive. Change the name of the file from mbam.exe to mbam.com. This bypasses the issue.

You can also try the SuperAntiSpyware portable application. It can run from your flash drive. Again, change the extension on the file from .exe to .com.

3

Your problem probably isn’t a virus, so you can run anti-virus software until the cows come home and it will not fix anything. It is possible that some important file has been corrupted on your computer. YMMV but the first thing I would try is to run System Restore.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-is-System-Restore

4

Try running rkill.com to terminate any resident spyware processes:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic308364.html

Then run MalwareBytes and see what it comes up with.

5

You can also Google for the repair exe files for the version of Windows you are using. It will fix the registry and allow you to run Malwarebytes or any other program again. Here’s the one for XP: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/fileassoc/xp_exe_fix.zip

6

I send everyone here… They know what they are doing

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic58138.html

7

Thanks. I tried that, but as I said, I can’t run anything. Clicking ‘System Resotre’ brings up the ‘What program do you want to open this with?’ infinite loop.

8

Pffft. My machine is so buggy right now just trying to click your links, I’m probably infecting all of you. So sorry. Will try to install this SATA drive and disconnect my old ones. Sorry!!!

9

Can you run system restore from safe mode?

10

If… there is nothing on your primary drive that isn’t backed up, OR you are still able to back up everything that isn’t on to another drive, then just reformat & reinstall.
Honestly, the amount of time spent in dealing with such issues, and searching for solutions, outweighs the mere suckitude of installation and losing settings.

11

There is a repair option on Windows XP

Boot from your installation Disk, the repair option is after the License Agreement page where you have the option of overwriting the existing install or repair.

The repair option will re-install Windows without loosing your personal data.

Not all versions of XP have this repair options, think OEM doesn’t, so if get to the point where it asks if you want to format and you have not seen the repair page just log off or you will lose everything.

:slight_smile:

12

I’ll try that later tonight when I have time. To do it I need to change my boot drive to the CD drive by holding down f8 during start-up and changing the settings, right?

I ask because when I unhook my hard drives (except for the still undetected, new SATA drive) and boot with the Windows disk in, then I see the repair option. When I boot with the hard drives connected and just pop in the Windows disk, I do not see the repair option.

Of course I may be missing something. Clearly this isn’t my field. :slight_smile:

13

No, you need to enter BIOS setup, which is F2 on many computers, but yours may vary. Look on the manufacturer’s boot screen for the key to enter ‘setup’. F8 goes to the advanced boot menu, which has different boot options such as safe mode, but no boot device options.

14

As “fear” said you may have to go into the BIOS to change the boot sequence to boot from CD drive.

It varies and on my computer I hit the “delete” button during normal start up. On the BIOS page you,ll see many options just navigate to the Boot menu and change to CD and remember to save this setting as you exit, usually the f10 key.

Remember also to reset the BIOS back to boot from your HDD after you finished or you will continue to boot from CD.

The Repair option is the one AFTER the agreement page. There is a repair option earlier in the sequence but you don’t want that one.

:slight_smile:

15

ComboFix…it never hurts (except when it does).

16

Just imagine if your computer got some virus that made it just loop this all day.

17

…

18

Looks like I am back up and running. What worked was installing the tiny jumper to reduce the speed of the SATA to 1.5 gb. Then the motherboard detected it. I can’t believe how much memory these things have.

Funny that I could not unplug my hard drives and boot just from the CD and the blank SATA- boot from CD option did not appear in this case. I would’ve preferred to do it that way, but I think my new Windows install will be fine. It is ridiculous how long it takes to install Windows!

I might want to spend $50 for some anti-virus software. Norton? Would it keep the crazy pirate virus away?

19

It slowing down the SATA fixed the problem, I don’t understand why you think you had a virus. I suggest you try Avast. It’s free and gets pretty good reviews.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358288,00.asp

I’d also suggest you might want to use Google Chrome as your browser. It seems to detect back web sites.

20

I would rather have a virus than any Norton product.