HELP VIRUS

[Ferrariman]

Linux live cd.

 

[Ace Gunman]

Aha! Malwarebytes fixed it! After a 5 hour deep scan, and a secondary quick scan, followed up by a HijackThis scan it seems I've eliminated the beast. My goodness, that was quite a struggle. I've never had quite so much trouble with a virus before. All of my usual programs and methods were met with failure. Hence my desperate act of requesting help.

Anywho, I have a new problem. Somewhere along the line my Display Properties option lost the Background and Screensaver customization tabs. I'm going to assume a defrag can fix this, but as I only want to do a defrag as a last resort (my HDD is far too full, I'd need to move all the files, ugh); I was wondering if anyone could confirm this beforehand?

 

[SavageWaffle]

Forget it.

 

[Mewgia]

Aha! Malwarebytes fixed it! After a 5 hour deep scan, and a secondary quick scan, followed up by a HijackThis scan it seems I've eliminated the beast. My goodness, that was quite a struggle. I've never had quite so much trouble with a virus before. All of my usual programs and methods were met with failure. Hence my desperate act of requesting help.

Anywho, I have a new problem. Somewhere along the line my Display Properties option lost the Background and Screensaver customization tabs. I'm going to assume a defrag can fix this, but as I only want to do a defrag as a last resort (my HDD is far too full, I'd need to move all the files, ugh); I was wondering if anyone could confirm this beforehand?

Why would you need to move files to defrag your harddrive?

 

[Ace Gunman]

Aha! Malwarebytes fixed it! After a 5 hour deep scan, and a secondary quick scan, followed up by a HijackThis scan it seems I've eliminated the beast. My goodness, that was quite a struggle. I've never had quite so much trouble with a virus before. All of my usual programs and methods were met with failure. Hence my desperate act of requesting help.

Anywho, I have a new problem. Somewhere along the line my Display Properties option lost the Background and Screensaver customization tabs. I'm going to assume a defrag can fix this, but as I only want to do a defrag as a last resort (my HDD is far too full, I'd need to move all the files, ugh); I was wondering if anyone could confirm this beforehand?

Why would you need to move files to defrag your harddrive?

Because it's so ridiculously full that it won't let me. You need 15% free HDD space in order to perform a defrag.

 

[Foxle]

You really should consider going out and buying an external hard drive to back up your data onto, and then reinstall your OS. Even if your anti-malware and anti-virus tools have you in the clear for now, it's still impossible to 100% remove a virus from your system. There are probably some lingering bits in your system just waiting for the right moment to come back and bite you. It's always good to have a backup of your system lying around, and you'll find that it runs much faster after a fresh install.

 

[Prime]

Next time don't go on random p0rn sites and be sure to get a extra HDD for backups

 

[da_head]

Next time don't go on random p0rn sites and be sure to get a extra HDD for backups

+1.

for future references, go here whenever u have a virus problem. http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?t=58138

 

[Ace Gunman]

You really should consider going out and buying an external hard drive to back up your data onto, and then reinstall your OS. Even if your anti-malware and anti-virus tools have you in the clear for now, it's still impossible to 100% remove a virus from your system. There are probably some lingering bits in your system just waiting for the right moment to come back and bite you. It's always good to have a backup of your system lying around, and you'll find that it runs much faster after a fresh install.
My problem isn't cost, it's intent. Moving data from one HDD to another slows my PC to a crawl. And since I feel the need to be on it 24/7 that throws a kink into my activities. As such I'm a bit of a virtual packrat, moving data only when I absolutely have to.

QUOTE(Prime @ Sep 21 2008, 02:21 PM) Next time don't go on random p0rn sites and be sure to get a extra HDD for backups

Lol, I was actually on IGN when I got infected. Though it's possible it was before that, I find it odd that none of my programs picked it up until the last minute, if that is indeed the case.

 

[Dack]

The final part of the virus sets a policy on your system to stop you changing the background.

You can fix this using the policy editor (start->run->gpedit.msc on XP Pro), I believe ccleaner fixes this on XP Home - just do a registry check and fix. www.ccleaner.com

Failing that you can try and fix it yourself by starting regeditor navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop, change the DWORD value "NoChangingWallpaper" so that it's value is 0. I believe deleting it also does the same.

 

[Urza]

You really should consider going out and buying an external hard drive to back up your data onto, and then reinstall your OS. Even if your anti-malware and anti-virus tools have you in the clear for now, it's still impossible to 100% remove a virus from your system. There are probably some lingering bits in your system just waiting for the right moment to come back and bite you. It's always good to have a backup of your system lying around, and you'll find that it runs much faster after a fresh install.

My problem isn't cost, it's intent. Moving data from one HDD to another slows my PC to a crawl. And since I feel the need to be on it 24/7 that throws a kink into my activities. As such I'm a bit of a virtual packrat, moving data only when I absolutely have to.

If you spend so much time on it, why do you keep it so horribly maintained? Why did you not have any sort of utils ready in case it wasn't operational?

 

[juggernaut911]

You really should consider going out and buying an external hard drive to back up your data onto, and then reinstall your OS. Even if your anti-malware and anti-virus tools have you in the clear for now, it's still impossible to 100% remove a virus from your system. There are probably some lingering bits in your system just waiting for the right moment to come back and bite you. It's always good to have a backup of your system lying around, and you'll find that it runs much faster after a fresh install.

My problem isn't cost, it's intent. Moving data from one HDD to another slows my PC to a crawl. And since I feel the need to be on it 24/7 that throws a kink into my activities. As such I'm a bit of a virtual packrat, moving data only when I absolutely have to.

If you spend so much time on it, why do you keep it so horribly maintained? Why did you not have any sort of utils ready in case it wasn't operational?

well whats your anti-virus arsenal consist of?

 

[Ace Gunman]

The final part of the virus sets a policy on your system to stop you changing the background.

You can fix this using the policy editor (start->run->gpedit.msc on XP Pro), I believe ccleaner fixes this on XP Home - just do a registry check and fix. www.ccleaner.com

Failing that you can try and fix it yourself by starting regeditor navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop, change the DWORD value "NoChangingWallpaper" so that it's value is 0. I believe deleting it also does the same.
Thanks for the info, but it won't be necessary after all. I scanned my main account with Malwarebytes, just to be sure it's all gone, and it noticed the registry changes and corrected all of them. That's quite a miracle program.

If you spend so much time on it, why do you keep it so horribly maintained? Why did you not have any sort of utils ready in case it wasn't operational?
It may not make sense to you, but maintenance takes resources. When I run an anti-malware program, defragment, or mass move/backup files the PC becomes relatively useless to me until they finish. Since I spend the majority of my time on here that's unacceptable. You may ask, why not just schedule a time to do such things, and let things run their course? Because when I'm awake I want to be on here, and if I'm asleep the PC is off in lockdown so no guests or family members mess with it.

QUOTE(juggernaut911 @ Sep 21 2008, 08:48 PM)

well whats your anti-virus arsenal consist of?

Lets see... keep in mind I never use any of these programs at the same time. They're all loaded individually when I need them to scan or re-scan/etc. In alphabetical order they are (the ones in bold are the ones I use most often): Ad-Aware, Avast!, AVG Anti-Spyware, HijackThis, Spybot: Search & Destroy, SpywareBlaster, SpywareGuard (I'm dropping this one as it hasn't been updated in years), and finally Malwarebytes, now.

I'd also like to say thanks to everyone for the help, with my information seemingly cut off and my internet imperiled, you folks really stepped up in a hurry. Also, thank goodness for firewalls with outbound protection. Had it not alerted me to these files trying to call in more, I would have had a much larger mess on my hands.

 

[Diablo1123]

If you spend so much time on it, why do you keep it so horribly maintained? Why did you not have any sort of utils ready in case it wasn't operational?

It may not make sense to you, but maintenance takes resources. When I run an anti-malware program, defragment, or mass move/backup files the PC becomes relatively useless to me until they finish. Since I spend the majority of my time on here that's unacceptable. You may ask, why not just schedule a time to do such things, and let things run their course? Because when I'm awake I want to be on here, and if I'm asleep the PC is off in lockdown so no guests or family members mess with it.

Screensaver with password works fine =D
for me

 

[Ace Gunman]

Screensaver with password works fine =D
for me

This is true, but think about this: had my PC been running while I was asleep, and this virus took hold then, I wouldn't have been able to deal with it and it would have wrought all sorts of havok (more-so than it actually got to).

 

[Urza]

If you spend so much time on it, why do you keep it so horribly maintained? Why did you not have any sort of utils ready in case it wasn't operational?

It may not make sense to you, but maintenance takes resources. When I run an anti-malware program, defragment, or mass move/backup files the PC becomes relatively useless to me until they finish. Since I spend the majority of my time on here that's unacceptable. You may ask, why not just schedule a time to do such things, and let things run their course? Because when I'm awake I want to be on here, and if I'm asleep the PC is off in lockdown so no guests or family members mess with it.

It becomes useless because you've completely neglected any maintenance what-so-ever, turning it into a bloated piece of trash.

 

[Orc]

If you spend so much time on it, why do you keep it so horribly maintained? Why did you not have any sort of utils ready in case it wasn't operational?

It may not make sense to you, but maintenance takes resources. When I run an anti-malware program, defragment, or mass move/backup files the PC becomes relatively useless to me until they finish. Since I spend the majority of my time on here that's unacceptable. You may ask, why not just schedule a time to do such things, and let things run their course? Because when I'm awake I want to be on here, and if I'm asleep the PC is off in lockdown so no guests or family members mess with it.

A weekly (or even bi-monthly) thing shouldn't take much of your time. You can go outside and do something else or play a game. Tell people it's left on because you are doing something important.
I find that it actually doesn't take that long if you've been maintaining it from the start.