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Haunted laptop (Virus/spyware dilemma)
Umaro
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
A nice little virus named Mal/FakeAvJs-A has nestled its way deep into my laptop's bosom and refuses to get lost. My array of free virus software is capable of detecting and cleaning it up, but even once it's 'gone' I inevitably hit a blue screen of death hours later, the OS citing a KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR before rebooting as though nothing had happened. Once it's booted back up the virus is back like it had never been deleted.
Is there any way I can dig this thing out without dropping a lot of money on a "pro" or "platinum" virus scanner? The free ones have always served me well up until this thing. Is there any more information I could provide that would help? Despite sitting in front of a computer for the past twelve years of my life I know basically nothing about them when it comes to technical details.
Is there any way I can dig this thing out without dropping a lot of money on a "pro" or "platinum" virus scanner? The free ones have always served me well up until this thing. Is there any more information I could provide that would help? Despite sitting in front of a computer for the past twelve years of my life I know basically nothing about them when it comes to technical details.
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If that all fails, blow away the machine and reinstall.
When you get your computer back up and running, make sure you have appropriate preventative programs in place. I prefer Avast Antivirus (free home license), Spybot S&D, and Malwarebytes.
If you're serious about this, don't use the laptop for anything sensitive. Don't check your email with it, log into any website that you want to keep your account on, and certainly don't use the laptop for banking. This infection obviously has deep tendrils if it keeps coming back, and these things live on your machine to harvest your personal/login information. Or, they open backdoors for other nasties that do.
edit: apparently I need to quarantine it before I can take further action, but quarantine doesn't work. Should I try installing a different anti-virus?
Are you using Internet Explorer still? If so, stop using it for now and go download Chrome or Firefox. You can return to using IE after you have installed whatever AV solution you want. Also, quit going to random sites for now (including what otherwise might be legit wikis).
Secondly, Kapersky costs money. It's a good virus scanner, but are you sure you want to pony up the cash for it? There are good free alternatives like Avast! Antivirus Free Home Edition or AVG Free Edition. If you haven't done so, consider downloading the Microsoft Security Essentials.
I fucking hate computers.
What OS are you using (XP, Vista, Win7)?
Did you copy back over files you backed up to the reinstalled computer? They may be potentially infected.
Go through your process explorer (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and kill processes that you feel are sketchy. If in doubt, google the process name (like svchost.exe - dont kill this guy, but kill something named scvhost.exe) and it will tell you what it is and if you can kill it.
It sounds like you only did a repair installation, not a full reinstall - I could be wrong though.
For example, the stack error could be caused by either hard drive, disk controller or disk controller driver error. The BSOD after a reinstall seems "driver-ish" to me.
I'm not sure how to troubleshoot your notebook specifically beyond that, but maybe other people here do.