[KingRidley]

okay I'm browsing around when suddenly some windows security thing pops up and does a random virus scan. It turns up with like 30 results. A little popup on my taskbar keeps telling me to register the product in order to delete the malicious files. This of course looks like crap so I try to launch Norton to do a virus scan. Norton begins scanning, but it also sucks ass, so I try to download AVG Free 9.0 because I heard it was good.

First few tries to start firefox result in another popup telling me that a trojan is using firefox and gives me the option to continue unprotected or to register and delete bad files. Going unprotected freezes the screen for a second and then just refuses to let me use firefox, clicking register takes me to a registration popup. I finally get firefox up long enough to download AVG and get it installed, using task manager to quit out of the weird warning thing every time it comes up (running the same scan each time, also shows up as av.exe in tasks). It finally installs and gets ready to perform a scan. Then something blocks me out of all my programs. When I click on anything like the AVG icon or the firefox icon it says "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item."

Task manager shows that AVG is running in some form, but it's not a scan and I can't make it do anything. I opened firefox using a loophole (opening a flash video that I have set to play using firefox, take that douchebag virus) and I'm trying to find some online virus scanner because I can't access any of my own stuff anymore. I am also bailing out various important files, thankfully I just transferred many of them the other day so there's not too many to move.

But yeah, any clue what this is and how to stop it?

[Toki]

God damn KR how many times are we going to tell you to delete system32 to make your computer immune to viruses.

[Catfish]

I can't tell you how to fix this exactly because that's not really my forte, but when you do get this fixed/restore the system/start from scratch, ditch Norton and switch to Antivir. Seriously, Norton is what dads and people who don't know how to use computers use, it's a big bloated piece of shit, and AVG is no good anymore either. I've never had a problem with Antivir on my Windows boxes and it gets the stamp of approval from every competent computer user I know.

[KingRidley]

I'll try that one as soon as this is finished

to update I finally got AVG to do a scan, regained control of my programs, and the problem is subsiding. It has new problems with painfully slow internet connections (on my laptop now) but after googling the error I've found a number of methods to get rid of the virus. AVG is marking all sorts of shit that Norton never managed to find at a much faster rate, and when that's done I'll reboot and run another antivirus (stopzilla or something, recommended against this trojan) and that will hopefully catch all traces of the problem.

[Phizz]

i recommend putting adblock plus (with a subscription) and noscript on firefox. should keep you safe from all those porn and piracy sites

hell i don't even use an anti-virus anymore

[KingRidley]

I do have adblock on here so it definitely helps. Thing is that I just upgraded to firefox 3 literally the day before this happened so I am less than amused. Especially because I put off updating specifically to avoid this shit.

End result of the scan showed three viruses and 71 other bad programs, most of which strongly resembled what the av.exe was trying to accomplish. However, my PC is still painfully slow even with the files moved to a "virus vault" so I'm restarting in order to run two or three other solutions as well. Better safe than sorry, especially when "sorry" involves wiping my computer again.

[Saiklo]

Try avira. You get 2 pop ups a day telling you to buy the deluxe edition, but it works.

[noodles]

I moved from AVG to Avast recently. Has not failed me so far.

[Phizz]

KingRidley, on 19 February 2010 - 09:51 PM, said:

I do have adblock on here so it definitely helps.

noscript helps most of all. it should prevent hidden installations, exploits, or trojans on untrusted sites

[KingRidley]

Okay, I'll grab that too then.

New update is that fucking stopzilla wants me to register before it'll delete anything. So I said fuck that and decided to find and manually delete everything it found. I will also download antivir and try that, because Stopzilla DID find shit that AVG either missed or didn't fix. Fuck, I don't know what a virus vault is but I really hope it just means "delete this bitch." Still, I just want an antivirus that will find all my problems and delete them for free.

Also my PC is still slow as shit. I've deleted something important for the spyware, but I haven't killed it yet.

[KingRidley]

catfish I just did a google search and it says antivir is spyware, with like three sponsored links.

Just to be sure, this is avira antivir I should download, and it is definitely not spyware?

[Catfish]

Avira Antivir Personal, that's it. Not sure why it says it's spyware; if it is that's news to me.

[Saiklo]

I hope its not. Avira personal is the only antivirus on my pc and the damn thing runs fast as hell.

Also, what kind of google search are you running? I just looked up antivir and didn't get anything like spyware with sponsored results. I just got the main site for avira.

This post has been edited by Saiklo: 20 February 2010 - 10:00 AM

[KingRidley]

just regular google

and one more thing to be sure:

antivir will scan AND DELETE all bad files it finds without registration, correct? Because I need something that won't say YOU HAVE 1955 BAD FILES PLEASE REGISTER TO FIX THIS.

And while I'm at it does anyone have something to scan and fix my registry that will also do so without registration?

[Neckbeard]

noodles, on 20 February 2010 - 01:58 AM, said:

I moved from AVG to Avast recently. Has not failed me so far.

This. I've got Avast on my machine and, while it takes its time, it's really thorough about going through every part of every file on your computer should you want it to. It's constantly updating, entirely free and a pretty damn good antivirus program.

[Pryex]

Can I reccomend Avast, it's the best Anti-Virus I've ever used, and it's free.

It has a simple layout, select where you want to scan, and then hit the play button.

[Deed]

If you're still unsure about AntiVir, then definitely go with Avast!. That's all that needs to be said.

[Toki]

Pryex, on 20 February 2010 - 12:03 PM, said:

Can I reccomend Avast, it's the best Anti-Virus I've ever used, and it's free.

It has a simple layout, select where you want to scan, and then hit the play button.

Doing anything but a full system scan is just silly.

[noodles]

stuff like "virus vault" basically means the file has been moved to a place where it can do no harm or act on its own. You might have to go in there and delete everything manually at some point, if it does not do so automatically

[Squiggy]

I still have no problems with AVG, and I had a bad experience with Avira Antivir. It was okay for a while, but eventually it went crazy and messed stuff up. Uninstalling it fixed the issue and then we started using McAfee.

That computer eventually died off though, and I've been using AVG on my own computer and never had any problems, even now (except for this weird ass display problem but I don't think its a virus).

Recently my mom's computer had a problem with a virus that was pretending to be an antivirus, calling itself "GreenAV" and sorta trying to look like AVG. I had to manually remove it from the computer, searching for and deleting all related files, and then removing all of its entries from the registry.