Virus

well after three day of just watch and loading deep scans and then reformatting and load my back up back to my computer I'm back and running well

thank you all for your help

yesterday I decided to reformat my wife and son's laptop's for the only reason they had sum 700 viruses between them.

they are no longer running FREE ANTI-VIRUS SOFT WARE.

JAMES

I find it incredible that they had 700 viruses...perhaps the computer experts amongst us could make some comments as to whether that is possible or just faulty reporting by whatever AV software they are using?

Hmmmm, more likely 700 security risks from an Adaware/Privacy scan which covers spyware, adware, tracking cookies etc.

Sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect on a honey pot experiment where they attach a bare PC to the WWW and see what happens.

I use Avast(free), Zonealarm(free) and Firefox and have a blip every blue moon. Keep your windows updated, your antivirus definitions updated, don't install "free" utilities or programs, unless they come from a known kosher source. Oh yes my ADSL thingy has a firewall too and I CCleaner occasionally. I've given up with email on the PC and only now use online browser based email.

MSE has a good down to earth techie thread
Their sticky : click

Are you maybe using several AV programs?

No it's right my wife had 342 worms or malware attacks on her computer and was running free avasts and my son was using mcafree software and he had 448 worms or malware attacks however most of his worms were attached to a browser search (my web site's).

my son users both laptop computers for gaming and good for me I will not let him on any of my computers as I've had trouble in the past with family using my computer and down loading music from limewire and going on chat rooms.

avast was used because of the anti key stroke fetchers it has on it because my wife pays most for her bill's on-line and McAfre came with my sons laptop was a gift from father Christmas.

and if i could I would post the original screen shot from the computers to prove the amount of worms/malware/virus's attacks, malwarebyts was used and kaspersky to reach the total amount of attacks

James

There's nothing wrong with free AV programs. And there's little right about Norton, which is a huge resource hog.

G

As most of the "worms" were attached to your browser history they will have been adware, which although a nuisance are not malicious in themselves. They basically monitor your browsing history so you can be targeted with ads, normally pop-ups which are easy to block. I would suspect you only had one serious infection.

amoringello, to call my suggestion "foolhardy" is to make an assumption that you know what my level of experience in computers is, which obviously you don't. I also see nothing in your posts that indicates you have any depth of knowledge on the subject. Perhaps try running Ccleaner and/or Malwarebytes on your own computer and see how quick you are to reformat your drive? They will always find something, as adware is an ongoing issue. I recently removed 1.8 gb of adware from a colleagues computer. To set the record straight, my experience dates back to DOS and includes removal of worms, viruses, trojans and other malware from a number of computers. Most recently, this involved re-writing registry keys in safe mode on a work colleagues infected computer after it crashed completely and he could not get access to any of his data, which he had not backed up. It took me a whole day but I got it working, and clean.

To reformat a drive, and then install back-ups taken from the same computer, (especially taken after the infection was discovered, if I understand James's previous posts corectly) is a waste of time as the back-ups most likely will also be infected. Scanning the drive the back-ups have been put on will not neccessarily isolate them before they re-infect the host computer. Most viruses and trojans will jump from a drive to a computer as soon as the drive is connected. Some will create a dormant copy of themselves that can either be remotely activated or work on a timer.

It is far safer and less time-consuming to remove the infections from the computer they are on. Malware bytes is a perfectly adequate tool for this. Ccleaner is a good tool for ongoing adware removal. The best solution long-term is a bootable back-up disk that contains an image of your whole computer, including all files and the operating system. I use Acronis, but Symantec Ghost is another option. Regular scans with Ccleaner and Malwarebytes, in conjunction with a good anti-virus program (I have been using AVG Free since it's inception with no problems whatsover) should keep your computer healthy.

The first thing most trojans or viruses do is remove the restore points from your computer, so you cannot restore your computer to a previous state. If this happens, you know you have a srious infection, and can restore your data from a bootable recovery disk should it prove too difficult to remove or isolate the infection. To date I have only had to do this once (this after someone else had been using my computer). This will restore your computer to a pre-infected state.

I would suggest, James, that you run Malwarebytes on all your computers again now, and implement a regular program of cleaning up your computer with that and Ccleaner, which is also free. It can be downloaded here. link Stay away from other adware programs, as a lot of them are in fact adware themselves.

Limewire is notrious for viruses: if your son insists on downloading stuff at least get him to use a torrent, where the files are downloaded in pieces from multiple computers and so he is less likely to download a compltete virus.

George have you tried Norton 2009/2010? They are much leaner than the previous versions where your comments seemed to be justified. I use Norton 2010 and it's just not a problem.

I used AVG and it let a dreadful infection in and didn't realise it was there. Norton, Kaspersky and Sophos could all see it but sadly couldn't fix it.

Mike

I too was put off Norton by their huge demand on resources. However, the latest versions work like a charm. I've had no problems since I reverted to Norton 2009. It seems that Symantec has learnt a lesson or two.

AVG doesn't work very well if you have other anti-virus software on your computer. Were you using all of them at once? I've never had a problem with AVG. I think all anti-virus programs can be vulnerable to new infections if the updates are not produced quick enough.

All AV software generates far too many false positives which is why I posted the link to Jotti earlier in this thread http://virusscan.jotti.org
People have trial posted Windows Notepad.exe there and a lot of the virus scanners reported it as infected when it wasn't. A lot of the stuff you've had flagged up is probably safe and clean. Often if the program is protected from decompiling it gets flagged as infected. If you have Spybot Search and Destroy on your system it used to have a list of nasty stuff in the registry that it's looking out for, which was OK but the AV software used to scan for the virus name and flag it up as being infected which was just stupidity on behalf of the AV programmer.

I've never used one but a lot of people use a Sandbox for safe internet browsing: http://www.sandboxie.com - It's Free.

I've just had to restore one of my computers back to an image because Scandisk made a bit of a mess fixing some NTFS file errors. The image still had Virgin PC Guard on it (I'd uninstaled it after making the image due to false positives it kept flagging up). It immediately quarantined two known clean programs that I'd paid good money for, so it's coming off today!! Slows the system down too much anyway as do most of these type of programs.

AVG used to be good, but now has a bad reputation for false positives. I had a paid for version, which they just stopped supplying virus db updates for to force me to buy it again.

Norton used to be slow, but the latest version is supposed to be better and you don't get messed about by them. I admire the way they still use the same db format for updates and even old scanner progs still work. I don't actually use it but I've read that the update file always has the same name and the DL link never changes. Quite a lot of Norton CD's have a standalone Virus Scanner (System Works, Ghost 15 etc.) and I understand that it will import the latest definitions from say a flash drive.

Algi

AVG just let the infection in. It was the only AV program running behind a router firewall and nothing else at all fancy. It basically didn't do its job and worse still didn't realise that it hadn't. Fully updated etc.

I thought AVG was fine but that showed me it wasn't as up to date as the others I mentioned.

Maybe I was unlucky ...

You are correct my knowledge in computers is on a scale 1 to 10 is around 2

and yes I couldn't restore my computer as it wouldn't permit it.

Malwarebyts it a great tool but be a ware when i installed it on my wife's computer it was or should i say "it started to down load form a different site." My wife's avast anti-virus software caught the trojan and would not allow the down load to continue. I soon realized it was the wrong site and only down loaded from malwarebyts.

my sons computer was hijacked by a syn (i think that's correct ) and i only realized as the enter key and mouse started to move and operate on their own. But Kaspersky acknowledged this as stopped this and advised to activate the syn blocker

James

I am now getting a bit obsessive about scanning my computer doing malwarebyts twice a day and some times as soon as I come of line but I'm sure this will pass

Hi all,
Be aware that you should only run one antivirus program at a time on any computer. Somehow, they don't like competition.

If you want to change you antivirus software, I recommend that you
- download the new program
- disconnect (physically) from the Internet
- uninstall the old software
- install the new software
- reconnect to the Internet
- run an update on the virus definitions

Hi!

I use sometimes antirootkit programs to maim those hard to find rootkits, there is a free one called Blacklight from F-secure. Also I constantly use Sandboxie as it gives a security layer' in between the system and the Internet so can you safely surf in the Internet. Afterwards just delete the contents of the sandbox and potential malware gets pulverized. Here is a link, before installing, to check if there any incompatibilities between your existing programs and Sandboxie: http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?HelpTopics . If you install read the short tutorial. It's easy to use.

Regards,
Tobio