help with a virus

[Northants Girly]

Hello
I've just had a message from a friend of mine that is stuck with some sort of virus on her computer - it's not really my thing though and I don't know what to suggest. Has anyone got any suggestions I could pass onto her?

"have a virus trojan downloader backdoor have any ideas how to get rid of
it; have tried everything, AVG and bulldog"

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Dreadful Scathe]

AVG has an update option - make sure she is up to date and run a scan

i assume AVG is already finding it though or how does she know she has it ? run a full scan and see if AVG gets rid of it

[bigdjiver]

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

offers a free online virus scan / fix

as does trend with housecall:

http://uk.trendmicro-europe.com/index_consumer.php

[ElaineB]

Yup - see 'Help - PC problem' in this thread! Loads of good advice. For me though, the only thing that seemed to work was to install 'Norton Internet Security 2004 Professional'.

Best of luck!


Elaine

[philsmove]

Have you ever been connect to a help desk in India http://www.testdomicile.dk/webhitsql.asp?update=3651

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

This is a video link so you need broadband

[Magic Hans]

For this specific virus, check out:

http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/downloader.trojan.html

Symantec is the industry standard for virus removal software, Norton Antivirus.

For future, I would recommend downloading something like "Spybot Search and Destroy", or "Adaware" from Lavasoft. These spyware removal and protection tools nicely fill the gap that traditional anti-virus packages can have problems with.

Hope this helps ... Ian

[Northants Girly]

In the end my friend backed up her important files and reinstalled windows :sick:

thanks for all the tips anyway

Linda

[ElaineB]

In the end my friend backed up her important files and reinstalled windows :sick:

thanks for all the tips anyway

Linda

Yep, we did that as well, but before I could install Norton Internet Professional 2004, I was attacked again!

No problems since, fingers crossed!!


Elaine

[ChrisA]

Yep, we did that as well, but before I could install Norton Internet Professional 2004, I was attacked again!

Shutting the door after the horse has bolted, of course, but connecting to the internet before installing a firewall or switching on XP's one (and preferably anti-virus software) is courting trouble, as you obviously know now :hug:

It's perfectly possible to use even XP's rudimentary firewall to protect against worms (ie the things that attack you as soon as your PC appears on the internet) - but it has to be switched on.

With XP Service Pack 2 (which home users should usually install), everything becomes a lot more secure, since the firewall is on by default.

When reinstalling, the very first thing to do is unplug the wire that goes from the PC to the phone socket!!!

Then install XP, then Service Pack 2 (it's available on CD with lots of PC mags at the moment), and make sure the firewall is on.

Then reconnect the phone wire!!

Then before downloading email or visiting random web sites, install some anti-virus software - McAfee is very good for less than £30, and AVG is free and pretty effective too, by all accounts, if not quite so easy to use.

Then, once you've allowed the AV software to update itself, go to Windows Update and get any critical patches released since SP2.

Have the AV software do a complete scan regularly, and install a SpyWare detector too (eg Spybot Search and Destroy) - and scan with that regularly too.

Once this is done (and it's not really as hard as it sounds), you're pretty safe.

For the Mac and Linux users, this is where you jump in... :devil:

Chris