Cleaning Infected Outlook Express Messages

Hello everyone,

My system was affected with some virus lately which made my Norton Antivirus also to crash. Then i backed up files and reloaded everything. When i scanned the backed up files using Norton AV it showed infections and some of them could not be removed. I had W32.Klez and W32.Badtrans.B@mm in the infections. I used the removal tools for cleaning those infected files. Then i restored my mails in outlook express which is very important. after that my system has slowed down and i suspect an infection. But Norton AV with the latest definitions dosent show any infections.

How will i make sure no virus is present. My main problem is does NAV or the virus removal tools remove virus from the mails. if not is there any possible way to do this.

Please help

Thanks for the support.

The AV software should be able to remove the virus from your mail. When you scan it should clean any viruses that are found (if you have that option set), if the file can't be cleaned then I usually just delete it. I have never had a problem with a removal tool not working.

As far as the system slowdown, I don't know..... If you're AV defs are up to date then NAV would find a virus. That is as long as it knows about it...

Though the slowdown is not likely caused by files still infected at this point, try one of the online scans.

HouseCall by Trend Micro

Active Scan by Panda

The Panda online scan did recently find an infected attachment in an old message on my computer which Norton never caught in my regular scans. However, it had never activated, as I had apparently planned to hold the attachment for a while until more current virus definitions came out, then apparently had forgotten all about it. But it does show that because they treat attachments differently, scans by the two companies may possibly come up with different things.

Custy_J is right and if you do what Airhead said your rest more comfortably.

norton has the ability to 'sandbox' incoming mail, and scan it for virus before it can affect your system. just make sure the option to check email has been selected. this will however, slowdown the email process.
you can speed things up by turning 'check email' off, and depend on real time protection but your taking more of a risk.

your system could have been optimized for speed before you reinstalled everything. turn off all nonesential processes. if its win2k disable server and anything else that's not necessary for what you doing. stop foolish quick start items, stop msoffice from starting on load, you can start it manually when you need it and stop fastfind your computer can find things fast enough with out it.

Norton AntiVirus is no good. When I had an infection, it wouldn't even let me enter windows! Some Norton files could have been corrupted. Download a real antivirus program like McAfee and run a scan in DOS. When you install it, instructions for a DOS scan can be available at www.mcafeehelp.com . A trial copy of McAfee VirusScan can be downloaded at www.nai.com . this should fix your problem and if not, you can get manual removal (deleting files from registry) instructions at www.sarc.com .W32.Klez is known to disable antivirus programs.

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I have Windows 98 as the OS. I have enabled e-mail scanning and it is scanning the new mails. what i wanted was the solution for the existing mails. I'll try out the online scans proposed by Airhead.
Since my NAV dosent show any virus infections, i dont know whether i should download all the antivirus tools and run them. The problem with me is i'm using a slow dialup link to connect to internet. so i cannot be online for long.

Thanks once more for support. Please let me know any furthet details.

My home computer is loaded with Win98se, IE5.5 sp2 & OutlookExpress 5.0. The virus definitions in my NAV 7.0(2001) are dated 5/1. In a folder of OE are three attachments -Klez.H.
My Friday virus scan did *not* pick the evil three up.

Were I to open one of them, the NAV autoprotect would detect them. If your online scan detects a virus in an email attachment, please post back with that information.

Outlook 5.0 has a security hole and especailly for the virus Klez i have to say that it opens the link from where it downloads the virus. Be careful.

Bucket - Whether or not Norton catches an infected attachment may depend upon how it is configured. (I'll probably start another thread asking about details of configuring it after I check up on a few more things.) Norton caught several Klez-infected attachments for me when they came in, as I had email protection on at that time. But it didn't catch the Magistr attachment earlier, because I think I had turned off the email protection temporarily for some reason at the time it came in. And by default, I believe email files aren't scanned in manual scans.

For me the Panda online scan did catch the Magistr attachment, though. I expect it will catch Klez, too.

josephjohnt - I think Tedob1 may well be correct that items in startup might be responsible for your system slowdown. After Norton caught my Klez-infected emails, I discovered that some changes had been made to my system settings. I had to take something back out of startup that I had removed earlier to preserve system resources.

To see if startup items might be a factor, let's try this: Right click the My Computer icon, choose "properties." On the "performance" tab, what are the system resources just after you boot the computer? (This is for Windows 98, the only system I'm familiar with. If you have a different system and can't readily find system resources, I'm sure someone else can help you.)

Airhead: , the ISP of the home computer is MSN. In order to get mail with MSN, the Secure Password Authentication feature must be enabled. The email scanning feature of my AV program, NAV 7.0 (2001), will not work if SPA is enabled. Therefore, if I want to receive mail, I uncheck the email scanning feature of NAV.

The PC that I am on now has a cable modem - @Comcast.net- The AV program is NAV 7.0 (2001). If the email scanning feature of NAV is enabled, I am unable to receive mail.
Therefore, if I want to receive mail on this computer, no email scanning.


For a computer with IE 5.5 sp1, I install M$ patch q290108
For a PC with IE 5.5 sp2, I install M$ patch q319182, and others
For a computer with IE 6.0, install M$ patch q319182, and others
All Preview Panes are disabled.
I dunno what else I can do to guard against Klez

bucket - Since your situation seems to be somewhat different than that of josephjohnt, why don't you start your own thread. That way it won't seem like we're highjacking his thread. I'm not sure I know enough about it to solve your problem, but I expect others here do.

Joseph:
I see that your OS is Win98. What version of NAV are you using?

Hi everone,

Thanks for the great responses. Till now i'm not able to do the online scan. I'm a bit busy with my classes and the computer which is infected is my friends which is far from my place. Also since we have only a Dial-up connection I dont know we will be able to do an online scan of 20GB HDD.

I'm using Windows 98SE with Norton 2002. Till now i have not applied any windows or IE patches. The system got affected when the e-mail scanning was off. Now i have kept it on.

I'll try the sugestions as soon as possible and get back to u all.

Thanks once more

My computer did the same thing. My McAfee told me it removed the infected file but my system slowed down. It regained it speed again when I did extensive maintenance and ran several system and windows repair tools from Norton Utilities. It turned out that I was not infected. Just to be safe I would run an online scan using Panda's ActiveScan. This is free, fast and powerfull. I also recommend Norton Utilities 2002 to anyone reading this post. Norton Utilities is packed with troubleshooting and repair tools for your system and windows. It has Norton Windows Doctor (finds and repairs common Windows problems) and Norton System Check (finds and repairs common system problems). It also has Norton Disk Doctor, Norton SpeedDisk and more.

HeyRyan:

Doesn't Norton Utilities slow you system down a bit ? I used to use a utility program called Nuts & Bolts. It *really*slowed my Win95a puter down.

IMHO.. Most AV's only scan incomming/outgoing eMails, If you want to scan mails already in the systems mailbox (*.dbx) you will need to extract them into a normal windows folder and scan them from there, this has worked for me. (which email infected this machine)

As for your system slowing down.. most the advice you have been given is good.. also isn't there a tutorial for susing out slow puter probs?

Cheers

u should try a mail-bomber cleaner. notron internet sec comes with an prog that scans inbox, or try a shareware VX scanner, till ur dilemma is over.

how did u manage to get badtarans and Klez? hrm............

It doesn't slow mine down. If anything, it speeds it up because it fixes most windows problems and disk problems. I probably slows down my computer by a bit because it probably takes up alot of disk space with all its stuff.