If you EVER had an FIRST Computer Virus......

[Alexander1970]

.....which one was it please and when ?
Did you also remember the Operating System ?

It can be also an Worm or some like that (as the SASSER one for example).

Summarized,some thing that made your Computer unusable.

Thank you for your experience.

 

[Mythical]

I was on windows 10. I uninstalled the virus via the programs list and *bam* BOSD. Had one more BSOD a month later, then haven't had a virus since (got good/they viruses got better)
I can't remember the name, but I remember the icon being orange of all things

 

[IC_]

Google Chrome

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Thinking on it, I don't think I've ever personally had a legit computer virus, worm, malware, etc etc I was never necessarily overly careful, I just didn't do obviously stupid stuff and so haven't had any issues in the many years I've spent using the internet.

 

[Reynardine]

The only thing I ever got (I was young and inexperienced) was a program that looked like an antivirus software but was actually malware that told me to "buy the pro version" because "your computer is infected with a dangerous virus".

I did a fresh install of Windows XP and it was gone.
I've never had any real virus that actually destroyed my OS/files.

Nowadays I'm a lot more careful and download suspicious things under Linux or run executables in a VM when I'm not sure if the file is safe.

I remember the days of using trainers on PC games. Bam, instand trojan/keylogger.

 

[Jokey_Carrot]

None because I'm not a brainlet who clicks minecraft free download banner ads

 

[Mollycule]

I had one that padded the swapfile with zeroes until the HDD was at 100% capacity and caused the PC to stall on boot within seconds each time.

Basic but effective

 

[Alexander1970]

Thank you all for your "Adventures".

I get the "Ripper" in 1997 on my FIRST PC with Windows 95.Until today I had no Idea from where,I do not have Internet at this time.

Conspiracy theory:Because of no Idea of Windows and a PC I managed it that Windows no longer works after 2 weeks.It was a Fujitsu PC and had "Vor Ort Service" (On site service).
I called the Hotline,two Days later the "Technician" came and do a new Windows Install.
That cost the equivalent of 150 Euros

A few days later I had that Virus,that is no Joke and was not funny at the time.
It has a nice Death Skull then instead of Windows 95 Bootlogo...next Boot up was only the Death Skull screen.with a Message...a classic Virus.


...and then I have learned how to install Windows 95 my myself......

 

[Deleted User]

I honestly don't know what virus it was, but when I got my first computer back when I was 13 (XP era) I started getting these porn advertisements, women dancing on the taskbar and such. I ended up system restoring that computer back to factory, which seemed to take care of it.

I also made a discovery that it took care of the NetNanny program my folks installed on it to monitor my computer usage, which opened up a whole new world to me lmao

Also around the same time after, there was Limewire. Man, that program was great when you got what you were looking for, and either horrifying or digusting when you didn't.
I've seen some things I'd love to forget.

 

[Deleted User]

back in 2009 when i was computer illiterate i got some shady virus that appeared out of nowhere, tried to look like a pc cleaning app but it wouldn't close and the clean button wouldn't do anything
it set almost all of my files to hidden, but at the very least i knew how to use the search feature so i found all my files anyway

this was on windows xp on my first pc, didn't really do much on the thing since it rarely had internet connectivity and it wasn't really powerful enough to do much

 

[KleinesSinchen]

"Antiexe" (MS-DOS) sometime in the 1990s. Stupid bootsector virus. It was so long ago. If I remember this correctly it loads as a hidden TSR-program and infects all floppy disks the user inserts.
I don't know if it is supposed to do some damage. But removal was like ARGH! I did not notice that thing at first and then I had so clean countless floppies.

 

[Ryccardo]

MSBlaster when it peaked in 2003, of course (and the first solution was to change the action on RPC crash to restart service instead of entire system!)

Next was when I deliberately tried a ransomware around 2016 - confirming my theory they don't make funny malware as they did (computers in general are a lot less entertaining, with everyone being in for the money worse than they were in the dotcom boom, and most everyone trying to rip off disgusting Apple flat kiddie design, but that's for another topic)

But the first reason to reinstall windows (ME) was that I set the scaling to 400% or so and couldn't reach the button to change it again, lol

 

[YukidaruPunch]

I believe it was maybe 14 years ago on the StopTazmo (I can't believe I actually remember the name of this thing) website. My computer was unbelievably slow and a pop-up ad had opened up which I didn't notice so I didn't rush for closing it. I remember the PC took a very long time to respond at all and then I got a Windows notice that a program literally called "lol" had crashed. Afterwards the whole PC started working like a mess.

I think we bought a new PC a year after that. Can't even remember how much I managed to salvage from the old machine. Personal files were dime a dozen, though.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

.....which one was it please and when ?
Did you also remember the Operating System ?

It can be also an Worm or some like that (as the SASSER one for example).

Summarized,some thing that made your Computer unusable.

Thank you for your experience.

It was Win95.Dir that I got through my own stupidity. I paid some dude at school to have his friend burn me a CD with games on, well the game I wanted to play the most had a virus on it, but I figured that my AV (which was McAfee at the time) would be able to disinfect it if I copied it to my PC first, since the CD was read only. Well, nothing happened when I copied it, I kind of expected my AV to detect it automatically.

Knowing a little bit about how AV software worked, but clearly not enough, I figured if I tried to run the game it would for sure block it and prompt to disinfect it. But it didn't block it, it just let me run it and then complained afterwards, at which point it was already too late.

The virus made my PC unstable, error messages on every boot, McAfee was constantly showing me BSOD-style error messages about a virus detected which didn't help matters much as it was completely unable to do anything about it, and the PC would occasionally crash, but it was still somewhat usable, so I kept using it to play my games and such until my uncle helped me reinstall Windows on it. That PC had Windows Me on it but my uncle put Windows 98 on it, which I didn't exactly mind. I didn't hate Win Me, it's not as bad as people seem to think, but it sure wasn't much of an improvement.

This was when I was around 11, so around 2002, had no internet to speak of, so I was very much new to the world of piracy, that CD was the first time I was ever able to get pirated games other than some bootlegs my dad bought in Asia, and I knew I wouldn't be able to get that game otherwise and I really wanted to play it so I thought it was worth the risk. But it wasn't.

 

[Taleweaver]

Looking back, it must've been somewhere in '92 or' 93. We had a computer then. Almost unique in the neighborhood, but not strange enough for me to find out similar ones. Piracy was easy, then. You just put in the floppy disks and did the DISKCOPY command.

Someone probably paid for original disks, at some point. Fact is that things got exchanged all the time (heck : I learned English partially that way).

First virus was already kind of ironic. A friend of my father claimed we have him a virus. When we got a virus scanner from him (also on floppy), it couldn't find anything... Until I checked the floppy itself. It must've copied itself then, as I got it on the hard drive later.

I THINK it was Yankee doodle, but I'm not sure (perhaps that one came later). This was on a pc using dos and windows 3.11.

I've had some viruses later, but never long (always had a scanner).

 

[RandomUser]

If my memory serves me correctly, the first virus infection back in Windows XP era, the virus scanner would detect and remove it, but kept coming back as the secondary virus that copies itself to primary was hidden from the virus scanner. After some searching, I manually eradicated the virus one piece at a time and cleaned up the registry and all is well. The good thing was the firewall prevented the virus from connecting to the network WAN and LAN alike to limit the infection to one computer.

 

[Deleted User]

.....which one was it please and when ?
Did you also remember the Operating System ?

It can be also an Worm or some like that (as the SASSER one for example).

Summarized,some thing that made your Computer unusable.

Thank you for your experience.

Ransomware, on windows 7, 8.1, and 10. All of my files including executables and documents were changed to the file extension .meds

 

[Alexander1970]

Ransomware, on windows 7, 8.1, and 10. All of my files including executables and documents were changed to the file extension .meds

A current Case....That is very sad to hear....

 

[CallmeBerto]

Maybe early 2000's when I was 10 or so. Just got my first PC and was messing around with it and ended up trying to get a free game and installing something bad that caused pop-ups all over the place. Thankfully I had the manual at the time and I was able to use system recovery to fix it before my parents found out.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

I don't think I've ever actually had my computer infected with a virus, but I've messed around with them, along with programs that many antiviruses will detect as a virus. When I was a kid I thought remote controlling one computer from another computer was one of the coolest things you could do. This was around the days of Windows 98, I didn't want to pay for a service like GoToMyPC. I found Specrem, which at the time was simply that, a remote control tool. It had a ton of additional features though! You could simply spy on the computer, look at the keyboard input, transfer files back and forth, disable the mouse or reverse the mouse buttons, open and close the CD drive, play sounds over the speakers, and more. You could make the remote computer do just about anything you could think of. I loved it! And yeah, I occasionally used it for pranks. My mom would be sitting at her computer chair, smoking a cigarette, cd drive opens out of nowhere and the speakers make a screaming noise and she jumps out of her seat.

At some point, Specrem was recognized as a Trojan virus, or a RAT ("Remote Administration Tool") rather than a typical remote control utility, and antivirus programs started detecting it.