Is there a malware/virus in the form of a fake registry cleaner?
- From: John <John@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 02:40:33 GMT
I spent an interesting New Years day trying to fix the sister-in-laws' old celeron (on dialup no less) running XP home. On reboot it had many pop-ups wanting to fix 288 registry entries. This was caused by a program called "Registry Cleaner" that she says she got in an email (Oh boy here we go!) and she tried to uninstall the stuff because it would only fix 20 of the 288 errors unless she agreed to pay for it.
Well the result is ...
1. It wont let task manager run in any mode, including all flavors of safe mode. Nope, three finger salute or right clicking the task bar has no effect.
2. Literally deletes the 'Highjackthis' (that I spent mucho time downloading) executable when you double click to start it. Now that was scary, no errors, the file just disappears in front of your eyes and noooo it wasn't in the trash either. It simply no longer existed!!! So .... unzip it and try again and you might get to one prompt before it disappears, maybe not. Tried a whole bunch of times & LDMAOF.
3. Ignores any and all attempts at 'Last Known Good' or restore points. Again no errors, its just ignored. But actually I don't know if restore was even turned on as I couldn't find any references to it in the menus and couldn't remember the name for the run prompt ... hehe!
4. Since I couldn't find any working anti-virus I downloaded AVAST!. But when you double click the installer file, accept the agreement and install directory, it either just dies -or- and here is the best one of all - asks if you want to send the installer to the recycle bin --- SAY WHAT !!! - Do you know how long it takes to get that on dialup???
5. Wont allow XP's 'help and support' to run in any mode. Couldn't remember the executable name to try from the run prompt. The hour glass doesn't even come on when selected from the start menu, just a big black nothing and anyway I was getting tired by then.
The thing that gets me is that other than the occasional offer to delete the Avast installer, there are no errors or messages of any kind when doing these things ... just ... nothing happens? In all other ways the comp runs, can get on line, surf, get/send email, can install & un-install software -- as long as its not Hijackthis or Avast -- LMAOF. It however does run really-really slow, but then again its a 3-4 year old celeron on dial-up that was always slowwww.
I have two witnesses to this odd sh*t .... my wife and the computer owner (the sister-in-law). She claimed to have anti-virus and a firewall but all I could find where dead startup file entries, Norton AV and what I can only guess were the remains of a McAfee firewall, she wasn't sure which was which - yahoo!!
The wife said "bring it home and connect it up to our PC to fix it" - LOL - I don't even want that sucker in my house without a priest and lots of holy water nearby!
Who knows, maybe its (also) hardware related, it did loose the time & date on one of the endless restarts I put it through. Though the bios was considerate enough to tell me that it forgot - oops.
I have no idea? John .
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