This is supposed to be a vacation

[voxwoman]

So why am I fixing my husband's computer?

He was surfing the net without any protection. The free Avast! AV software needed to be re-registered, and he chose to ignore the warnings and I think he got Conicker or something on 4/1, which then installed the pretend anti-spyware malware that is going around. This is starting to prove to be beyond my feeble computer skills.

I gave him the analogy that this was like me driving my car without oil for a couple of weeks, ignoring the dashboard light, and then expecting him to rebuild the engine during his vacation. (I did not mention that I've blown up 3 engines in my life this very way, but in all cases, I wound up shelling out large sums of money to mechanics, and I was under 25 and irresponsible)

I am trying very hard to avoid a nuke and pave, but I am thinking that this is possibly the only thing I will be able to do to get this machine back to usability. I am just so not looking forward to reloading all this crap that's on there, and I'm not sure if the pictures and other things on the system are safe to back up.

Edit: www.majorgeeks.com has come through again! I downloaded a malware removal tool, which caught a bunch of things, and I was able to reinstall Avast! AVP (which is now scanning the laptop's hard drive). I am hopeful that I can declare this machine clean again before I go to bed tonight.

Oooh! Avast just found an infected file. That is a good sign.

Comments

[dqg-neal.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough at work I ended up protecting all the machines but 1. One out of 460 isn't bad. The one happened to have been one of my own workstations. It had a worm that I couldn't detect no matter how many spyware programs I had installed. I could see the effects but not find the cause. After two days I decided it was easier to re-install windows.

[enotnert.livejournal.com]

conflicker has nothing to do with the fake anti-spyware, conflicker was something that has only begun to stir, has done much of nothing (especially much of nothing on april 1st). . .

For future reference, anything like anti-spyware 2009, anti-virus XP, anti-virxp360superturbo edition etc so forth and so on. .

Get ComboFix from bleeping computer, and malwarebytes anti-malware for an after scan.

Most commercial (and even free) scanners don't catch that infection, trendmicro only barely started covering it, and you get it from the most innocent places (my fiancee got it from a crock pot recipe website of all places).