Re: Computer stuff, possible help

Neon John wrote:
On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 08:50:28 -0800, Mickey <mickey@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Christmas day my son's laptop got hit with a bunch of crap off the
internet. Mostly Rougeware (malware trying to pass itself off as
legit software) Couple of the better known pieces are Antivirus
2008/2009 and another one Antivirus Pro looks like legit MS
anitvirus stuff. Don't ask me how it got there as I don't know. I
do know he is running Spybot and AVG in the background and neither
caught this crap initially.

If you DL and install/run they are soon reporting it has found tons
of spyware and malware, mostly false info. You can make it all go
away by coughing up a few $$$.

Seems all but impossible to get rig of this crap. Spybot, Adaware,
AVG, McAfee, etc may or may not find some of the stuff but none of
them get rid of it. I spent 6-8 hrs trying before I found the
answer.

hi Mickey

I think you've explained what this been going on with my computer for
the last couple of months. When AVG eight came out, it was a
disaster on my machine. I started looking for alternatives and I'm
reasonably sure that I tried one of those that you mentioned. I had
the message service turned off so I didn't get any pop ups and
nothing started happening at first, but gradually my machine went to
war with itself.

Symptoms included:

near 100% CPU time, most going to DPCs
very unresponsive serial port/modem
SYN storm out both my modem and my LAN ports
WinSock would run out of memory after five or 10 minutes of being
connected

Unfortunately in my case, Malwarebytes did not find the problem. I
tried it, ClamWin, Avast and one more that I can't recall the name
of. None of those programs found anything. Also tried every AdWare
removal package that I could find and tried the various rootkit
removals. Nothing.

I was at the point of doing a clean install, something I've never had
to do on this computer, when I decide to try a "repair" install. My
machine is old enough that it came with a Windows distribution disk
instead of the so-called "restore" disc that computers now come with.
The repair install basically does a Windows install but does not
affect your programs or your settings. That solve my problem.

I have one funky little problem remaining and that is every time I
start Windows Explorer it pops up the "preparing to install" screen
three times very briefly before the program actually starts. No idea
what that's all about but since it doesn't seem to be hurting
anything I'm not worried about it.

For keep an eye on what kind of crap programs are trying to install
for start up, I use a program called "startup Monitor":

http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml

it is a small and very lightweight program that I've used for years.
Note that Microsoft recommends that you use the system administration
service called "services" to do this kind of stuff. You can start
services a doing start->Run and then typing "services.msc". You can
also put a shortcut on your desktop with this commandline:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.msc so that you can start it with a
mouse click.

one other thing I have done is set up Malwarebytes to run from the
scheduler every night. It takes to entries in the scheduler, one to
update the malware database and one that actually do the scan. I
don't do dangerous computing so I don't need a virus program the
hooks and every system call and slows my machine down like AVG and
even Avast do. Just a nightly scan to make sure nothing slipped in.

I really appreciate your post, as it enables me to understand what was
happening with my machine. I knew there was Malware present but none
of the tools I tried would find it. I'm just thankful that I could
do a repair install.

John

I didn't like AVG 8 either and went with Avast for a while, but got tired of
their nagware. Found out that AVG 7 was still supported and reinstalled it.

--
Frank Howell


.

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