My desk top got infected, what should I do?

yungman

I have Mcafee and they are no help. I download Microsoft security essential and caught a few virus but still it is not working. Can anyone give me some guidance?

Greg Bernhardt

What were the viruses? Were they deleted or contained?

turbo

I personally use the free AVAST suite. The malware definitions are updated at least once a day. McAfee and Norton don't do this. They are way too big and slow and hog resources. If you can download AVAST and run it, great. Some malware is designed to limit your PC's access to sites of companies that can detect and remove their crap, so you might have to get creative. Please post back again with your progress or lack of. Good luck.

yungman

Thanks for the reply, Macfee keep detecting virus and clean it. But still I can't get back to normal operation. I called them and they offer me to fix the computer for $89 dollars!!!!............after I paid for full coverage on three computers!!! I declined and all they can offer me is a program called Stinger. I ran it a few times and no good result. I went on MS and got their security sweep and it found 3 more virus and cleaned them. But still no luck.

yungman

I'll look into this later today, it is right in the middle of the scanning again!!

Thanks for you help.

turbo

If you can't download an effective anti-piracy/anti-malware screen, that's probably a good sign that the product could be effective at removing their crap. You might have to get real creative, and download the product on a different PC, burn it to CD, install it in Safe Mode on the infected PC or some other contortions.

Good luck!

Astronuc

One possibility would be to pull the infected HD, make it a slave, put it in a USB caddy and scan it from an uninfected computer.

I wonder if you have rootkit virus. One could try Kaspersky
http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/utility or
http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208283363

http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/avptool2011

There is also ESET or Bitdefender.

http://go.eset.com/us/online-scanner - online scanner

yungman

Thanks for the suggestion, I ran both and they both found and delete the virus. But still I have a blank screen.

It is funny, it seems that I have all the original desktop program and I can go to the lower left corner and use the start button and get those programs to run. But when I tried to pull the short cut back to the desktop, it won't let me do it. Could it be the original virus corrupted the system already and I need to recover the system. Or are there any virus still running?

Any more help will be much appreciated.

Thanks

Alan

yungman

Sorry I forgot to update you, I ran AVAST early last night and it did clean up some virus. But it still cannot bring back my deskstop screen with all the short cuts. After this, I tried Astronuc's suggestion and still no good result.

Please give me more idea. I hope I don't have to recover the system. I have a very good old printer that somehow cannot be detect in new installation on two other computers. If I recover the computer, I have no way to re-install the printer. I have a lot of the ink cartridges that amount to hundreds of dollars!!! I so hope I can fix this.

Thanks

Alan

turbo

I'm glad AVAST was helpful in some respects, though I am puzzled by your inability to recover your desktop. I've been out of OS-tweaking for too long to be of much help, and have no decent ideas.

robphy

I'm not sure what your situation is:
is it that you can get to the desktop but you can't see your shortcuts [right away]?

If you are having start up problems, you might try autoruns
technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902
You can see what gets loaded upon login and
effectively comment out what you don't want to start up.

Can you create a new account and use that as normal?

It could be that your current account is messed up somehow... (registry errors? start up errors?) You could copy the shortcuts from the other account to the new account. Unfortunately, most of your personalization settings might not be easily replicated.

yungman

I just remember I created a "Test User" account in the safe mode when the computer was first infected by virus. I am stuck in the "Test User" account and can't get out of it. I tried to switch user by logging off but it did not show any other user to switch.


Because Test User has gone through a lot of "hard life" from the virus. Now that I ran a lot of cleaning program, I created another administrator account and delete Test User. The new account boot up normal with the music( which is a big step forward). It is still empty but I went into the Original User, Desktop and pull out most of the icons and it seems to work so far. I loss a lot of them but it seems better. I loss the printer stuff though. I am still working on this.

Gavin Harper

Clean install.

You can never realistically trust the system's integrity from this point on.

HowlerMonkey

If you do a clean install, you should also do a fdisk /mbr as well.

Chronos

Try a restore point.

yungman

I agree, I am having an old laptop to do all banking and import work. Then I actually switch off the wireless of the laptop so nothing go in and out of the the laptop. I don't do any surfing on the little laptop, just for bank transaction only.

The desk top now is stripped of all storage drives, delete of all the important things and just use for surfing and fun work only. It is not back to normal, but it work pretty well. I am planning to drop McAfee when I have time and go to a new provider. Eventually I'll wipe the computer and recover the whole thing.