Re: OT: Help, computer under attack

On Thu, 8 Sep 2005 09:40:04 -0400, "Kol_Isha" <kol_isha@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Help from you techie types? My computer seems to be under attack by
>something called "Winfixer," some sort of advertisement for a program, which
>keeps popping up and trying to load, and continues doing so even when I try
>to close the windows that keep popping up. My Norton antivirus is always up
>to date, and it is not detecting any viruses. I clean my computer regularly
>(deleting temp files, cookies, etc., and running defrag). I run both Spybot
>and Adaware regularly, and neither of those are detecting this thing or
>getting rid of it. What is it and how do I stop it? It is making me
>crazy...
>
>TIA,
>
>Arlene
>
>-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
>"Kol_Isha" - A Woman's Voice
>


If you haven't already gotten rid of this thing with the hijack
program, you can try Microsoft's anti spyware program:

<http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx>

which is free and in "beta" release. It seems to be pretty
straightforward and will find and remove some things that the other
programs (Adaware, spybot) miss. You can set it up to run
automatically, if you like. It doesn't try to take over your computer
as Norton (in my opinion) seems to. Also, someone here recommended:

<http://www.adwareaway.com/ >

The crap programs that are really hard to get rid of are the ones that
implant themselves in the registry and then replicate themselves and
update the registry every time you reboot. That "about blank" adware
thing is one of those. To get rid of that one, I had to kill the
process and then manually find and rename the dlls that it scattered
around on my drive.

A while ago there was a discussion about Firefox versus IE. I think
this is a good example of why people like Firefox -- almost never will
you get one of these things installed on your computer if you are
using Firefox. Except, of course, if it's secretly bundled with some
sort of freeware/shareware program that you are interested in. I
have read that the file sharing utilities are the worst for having
malware included. Oh -- there are some programs out there that claim
to get rid of malware while actually installing more so I guess it
pays to read up on any freeware/shareware program you are interested
in.


.