Windows XP machine got a very mean trojan/virus

Satsumomo

Ok so well, this is my friend's computer. AFAIK it runs Windows XP SP3. He's got a 250GB SATA drive on it and probably another IDE one.

The problem started when he installed Kaspersky and tried to pirate it. He got a "This key has been blacklisted" message, and he says that the program simply decided not to protect him from the internet, but the antivirus remained active.

Now the problem is that his computer is denying any writing to the C: drive. Whenever he tries to copy or create anything on C:, he gets a message that his HDD is full, yet he still has 16GB free on it. Uninstalling programs also denies any access to C:, so basically he's been locked out of doing anything to C:

His other partition works just fine. A full scan reveals nothing. Is this a common problem? I've told him to make a new user account and see if that helps, haven't received a response yet.

urahonky

Uh... Get rid of the pirated copy of Kaspersky and download/install AVG. Then run that in safe mode? It'd be strange to see Kaspersky go at pirates by infecting/locking down their machine, but I've seen worse.

Satsumomo

Yeah I told him I seriously doubt Kaspersky would do that to his machine, but he says it happened right after that.

Your solution is the most obvious but... He can't uninstall/install anything.

ihmmy

can he not boot in safe mode and remove it then? or has he already tried that?

AtomBomb

Probably not Kapersky but the person who wrote the keygen. Pretty dumb to pirate AV imo, hopefully he learns something from it. Reminds me of a guy that worked at a pizza place with me in the early 90's. Showed up to work one day with one of those stupid viper alarms (VIPER IS ARMED!) on his car. Turns out he stole it. He was using a car alarm that wasn't even good enough to prevent itself from being stolen.

Artreus

Run an antivirus from a flash drive.