Re: Nightmare

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

Steve N. wrote:
> Lil' Dave wrote:
>
>> Yesterday, an acquaintance called asking for help on her PC with XP
>> home edition installed. She said the screen would flicker
>> sometimes, AND about 4 hours into the XP session, a buttload of
>> windows applications would open. During this time period, she had no
>> control of the mouse. Then, after a minute or so she had control
>> again, and could close all these applications. After about an hour of
>> evaluation by sight and usability found that
>> McAfee's firewall (free version) was installed, she was using AOL
>> 9.0. There were many shortcuts on the desktop to online virus
>> scanners and trojan finders. None of which I've heard of. XP SP2
>> was not installed. AOL 9.0s online had McAfee's AV available. Upon
>> downloading and attempting install, found it would not install
>> because it thought McAfee's AV was already installed (it was seeing
>> McAfee's firewall software). Furthermose, McAfee's firewall popup
>> blocker was inadequate as it failed to block many popups. In
>> experimentation, I opened Internet Explorer. The popup blocker
>> worked very well with IE. But, cause problems when attempting link
>> to webpages even there was no evidence of a popup and prevented
>> going to said webpage. Temporarily allowing popups allowed usage. The
>> children had changed the Administrator's username. She was
>> unfamiliar with the Administrator's capacity to assign user ability
>> to delete, remove, or access things in XP. She was familiar with
>> assigning usernames and passwords. Went to Pandasoftware.com for its
>> online virus scanner. It found
>> well over 200 virus infected files. Most appeared to reside in the
>> personal internet cache. Upon approval from my acquaintance, I
>> downloaded the Titanium version of Panda's AV and went offline. Found I
>> had to disable the McAfee firewall in able for Panda to
>> complete its installation, AND to not select the Panda firewall
>> option. Prior to actual installation, I opted for the installation
>> to scan the entire memory, and hard drives for viruses before actual
>> installation. It found one more virus and deleted it. Upon installation
>> of Panda Titanium AV, and reboot, the AV continued
>> to find and provide either a deletion option, or other for each
>> virus or trojan find. During the initial reboot, a trojan was found
>> in resident memory. In many cases, it offered to reboot, which we
>> opted for. This went on for many hours, and elected that my son
>> take over the process. This morning, I'm typing this from my home.
>>
>> My conclusions from the affair, don't used AOL 9.0 and the recent
>> free McAfee firewall and count on the popup blocker to be effective.
>> Or, to expect the free McAfee AV to install if that same firewall is
>> installed. Use the XP SP2 firewall which is already free and widely
>> available. Don't use a online virus scanner, bug finders etc.unless
>> the company has a reputation to protect and is generally known by
>> the public. And for Christ's sake people, install an good AV
>> program. Later today, I will be moving her personal files to removable
>> media.
>> We will wipe the hard drive, install XP from scratch, install SP2,
>> install the Panda Titatium AV, install any further windows critical
>> updates. I've recommended a more effective popup blocker, and she
>> conceded to its use. The reason for such drastic measures as we were
>> both unsure of three things: the possible of existence of any
>> further virus or trojan, the registry contents that may still enable
>> outside interference from the internet, the children's as users all
>> needed much work from scratch from the administrators' viewpoint and
>> we didn't know for sure how badly this was at this point. The LCD
>> monitor screen flickering was determined to be the monitor itself. It
>> resolved after ten minutes of warmup.
>
>
> Reformatting and reinstalling the OS is rearely needed to clean a
> system.

It is to remove all traces of AOHELL.

--
In memory of MS MVP Alex Nichol: http://www.dts-l.org/


.

Quantcast