More techy help..

[green_amber]

Sorry to be so useless but things not been very normal round here computer wise and I've still not been well enoufh to be at work.

Got Internet today finally, and due to all the confusion was not proitected by up to date A-virus for a few hours - now think has horrible viruses as both Firefox and something called Win 32-something keep crashing/giving me errors - and when I went to one site all sorts of warnings appeared. I tried to remove the viruses it said were there , but this required donwloading a file called setup.exe (yeh, helpful:) and bloody AVG tgen told me not to trust THAT - so I have no idea if that was actually an attack, a joke or whatever.

Now AVG won't let me in to the server to update the definition database.

What do i do???

Comments

[spacecrab.livejournal.com]

You might want to consider switching from AVG to Malwarebytes
Anti-malware (http://www.malwarebytes.org/). If your computer is functional enough
to let you install it, it will dissolve all the bad stuff
and bubble it right down into the bit bucket. Costs $30 to
get the version with real-time protection (to prevent repeat
infections), but the basic cleanup module is free.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I only have one experience of Malwarebytes - and that was when the Eastercon newsletter computers got infected by a worm a couple of weeks ago. Oops.

It cleaned it up effectively.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Thank you - that seems to have worked! My heartfelt thanks :)

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

> something called Win 32 keep crashing/giving me errors

Sorry, but that was hilarious.

Do not install any software that something tells you to install. It is probably just part of the attack. Only use software that you trust like AVG and whatever else you use.

If you have a specific virus or trojan then use a separate machine to understand what tools you need to clean it.

Alternatively if this is a new machine then just wipe it and install the OS from scratch. Was Windows/the OS supplied on CD/DVD?

Goodluck!

[cdave]

"Alternatively if this is a new machine then just wipe it and install the OS from scratch. Was Windows/the OS supplied on CD/DVD?"

Unfortunately I think this is the only way to be really sure you've dealt with the infection completely. And would be my first choice. Viruses (and SonyDRM ;) ) seem to be able to do all sorts of clever stuff like hiding from the task manager list, or choosing random names, making them hard to kill by hand.

I'm not sure what I'd do if I had to to clear an infection, rather than wipe. Many viruses seem to stop anti-virus programmes from functioning, so I'd consider an experiment with a Live-CD. But a quick search doesn't show any that look free and user friendly.

Precautions: As well as anti-virus, make sure you have a firewall in place too. Don't type your credit card number into that machine until you're sure it's been cleared. Change your online passwords, preferably using a different machine, after infection cleared.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all this. malwarebytes seems to have worked however! hoorah!