win32 nightmare

Hi there,

Thought I would put something down about this. It is yet another one about a friend who relies on her computer for her work, has had it for four years, and connected to the internet on it for the first time with no firewall antivirus or anything, for about an hour.

Well old muggins here, offered to help, by putting avast on, and when it did the boot scan, something like 84 files had to be dealt with.

So it doesn't work now, a bit like the London Underground. She was however clever enough to have partitioned the harddrive when she first got it, so all her work appears to be safe at the moment. She tried the recovery disc that came with the computer and it worked up to a point, though the virus alerts were still coming.

It was all win32 virus stuff. How do you deal with this, is it simply a clean install of the operating system, or is there ways to actually deal with this sort of crap?

I am never offering to secure someones pc again, they can all F**k off and die in their own ignorance if it means that I can sleep at night without the guilt of just appearing to wreck someones computer.


Jonobloody freekpot Rfodn

If all her work is on a seperate partition, I would recommend the fresh install... it might be the easiest way... then update the hell out of it.

Hi Jonnyfrond


You din't mention the type of OS, so assuming it's WinXp, does she have the discs, if so you may just want to go ahead and have her backup her data and then do a fresh install.

Keep in mind that when you do the fresh install and if it is WinXp to have a SP2 slipstreamed cd handy before connecting to the internet. http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...slipstream.asp

http://www.5starsupport.com/tutorial/new-pc.htm

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic2520.html

Safe Hex :cool:

If you're hell bent on cleaning it, do an online scan using Trend Micro's Housecall (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/). However, if the data is on another partition and safe, a format and reinstall will save a lot of hassle.

Cheers,
cgkanchi

Install and run Spybot, Ad-Aware, Ewido, do some online AV scans and possibly replace her AV program with something newer. Untold hours in front of her PC ought to do it.

If you're going to reinstall Windows, be sure to do a full format on the C: drive.

Be careful if its the recovery/restore disk that was supplied with the machine. Some of them will repartition the hardrive to start with.

Be doubly safe and back up her work externally, if it won't boot use a CD distro to transfer the files to a usb key or CDR.