Need Help with a virus

weather man bob

OKay, so I have a virus on my computer, and it is not allowing me to download anything to get rid of it, I tryed downloading the windows defener, and i keep getting a security warning that keeps telling me that i cannot execute a file or what not, and i need help

what should i do guys

I hope I am in the right place

Shorn Scrotum Man

Try to get at it from a Linux Live CD, if you are feeling really brave try out Knoppix STD. At least maybe you'll be able to do a backup before wiping the machine.

Unfortunately, with viruses the only 100% fullproof option is to nuke it from orbit

warban

Windows ME or 98?

Seriously though. Xp or Vista or Win7

NailbunnyPD

Safe Mode with Networking?

Use another PC to load up an alternate browser on a thumb drive?

Dark Shroud

Give Panda Active Scan a try: http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/

shadydentist

Sounds like a pretty serious problem. I second a Linux LiveCD, saving all important documents, then reformatting.

blizzard224

I sounds like you're not particularly familiar with the technical side of computers so I'll try and be really clear (forgive me if that is an incorrect assumption). You're likely pretty much fucked, sadly. When viruses get deeply inbeded in your system (as they likely are for you), there are great chains of files where one file will spawn another which will spawn another which will spawn another, as soon as they realize that one is gone, so even with the best virus scanner in the world it is hard to save. In truth, it's probably possible to do if you're really familiar with the Windows tools and know how to use safe mode to narrow possibilities down, and work out the chain of what's going on, but it could take days of fucking around. I had this sort of thing the other day, virus scanners would run, they'd each find like 7 or 8 trojans a scan, but next reboot they'd all just find another set, it wasn't going anywhere.

The best option is to use something like http://www.knoppix.com/ - what this will do is allow you to access your important files that you need to get off the system, work documents and such. You also have the option of uploading such files to Rapidshare or a site like that, but you will need to download them all again, so it's not a good option if you have videos or music that you want to save.

Once everything is off the system, you basically just want to nuke your system drive. You should be able to do this by just putting the Windows Install CD in, changing the boot priorities in BIOS to have CD as the boot priority (This will probably already be done), and then choosing to format the system drive (Almost certainly this will be C: ) before you install windows. Don't bother doing an upgrade, or whatever they call the option that reinstalls Windows over top of an existing install - it almost certainly won't get rid of the virus.

This sort of situations is one of the greatest reasons to have a separate, physical drive that you put the OS on, seperate to any music/games/movies, as you can just nuke the system drive and be done with it without hours of painful backups. I hope you have such a setup, otherwise backing everything up will likely be a massive pain.

Finally, try have a second computer next to you before you undertake the reformatting business, if something goes wrong it is lifesaving to have convenient access to the Internet.

lilB

Get an ubuntu live CD (www.ubuntu.com)
Boot it up
Install avast free antivirus (linux version)
mount your hard drive (click places menu and then click your hard drive)
Run avast, then select the drive and scan it (should be in "/media/(name of your hard drive)"

When its done you should be virus free