[Debs]

My muppet of a son has downloaded a virus through msn (he stupidly pressed 'click here if to see if this is your photo' - he supposed to be intelligent) and this has caused IE to go mad and when going web addresses other websites keep coming up and msn is almost unusable (which I'm not bothered about) but Norton did not picked it up (it was actually disabled and I had to reinstall it) and even though I've repeatedly scanned the computer Norton can't find the virus. Can anyone help?

 

[Marky Mark]

You could try running Spybot Search and Destroy in case it's installed some sort of redirector thingy. i also use Lava Soft Ad Aware. Both freeware, good luck.

MM

 

[Gram43]

My muppet of a son has downloaded a virus through msn (he stupidly pressed 'click here if to see if this is your photo' - he supposed to be intelligent) and this has caused IE to go mad and when going web addresses other websites keep coming up and msn is almost unusable (which I'm not bothered about) but Norton did not picked it up (it was actually disabled and I had to reinstall it) and even though I've repeatedly scanned the computer Norton can't find the virus. Can anyone help?

We get regular updates from our norton package and we had one today about a particularly malicious trojan virus that was taking sometime to detect on pc's and delete.

My opinion is that you go to the norton website and get the most up to date update, download it and re-scan.

Keep getting the updates just in case.

Good luck. :teeth:

 

[laterontoday]

Had similar problem when son downloaded a virus via msn by clicking on a picture he thought was of his mate. Ow big probs. Spybot wouldnt get it and the virus completely corrupted mcafee. Ended up buying a new hard drive for the pc and starting again. The virus disabled mcafee so prob did the same to Norton. Once downloaded Mcafee wouldnt update or switch back on. yes our mcafee was upto date and with auto updates downloading all the time.

Good luck cause I tried every last piece of virus removal software, spyware removal etc and none of it got that little git. Wasted hours and hours trying to sort it out.

A new hard drive will cost you £50+ from Maplins. If you can salavage any stored data then good luck, we managed to with the help of a puter friend. PC runs fine now with the new hard drive in.

 

[Sql]

As above, but try doing this in "Safe Mode". As the computer starts, following the BIOS screens hit F5 or F8, I can never remember which, but hit keys till until you get a menu and select Safe Mode. If you want to run the updates from the web, select the one with Network support as well.

Safe Mode does not start all the the normal "auto-start" applications that you normally have, and this includes the nasties as rule. It helps as some toe rag software detects your removal attempts and "fixes" itself as you try to clean it. Using Safe Mode should prevent it from starting, and hence it cannot detect the clean-up as it happens and should be gone by the time you next start normally.

 

[DannyB]

Had similar problem when son downloaded a virus via msn by clicking on a picture he thought was of his mate. Ow big probs. Spybot wouldnt get it and the virus completely corrupted mcafee. Ended up buying a new hard drive for the pc and starting again. The virus disabled mcafee so prob did the same to Norton. Once downloaded Mcafee wouldnt update or switch back on. yes our mcafee was upto date and with auto updates downloading all the time.

Good luck cause I tried every last piece of virus removal software, spyware removal etc and none of it got that little git. Wasted hours and hours trying to sort it out.

A new hard drive will cost you £50+ from Maplins. If you can salavage any stored data then good luck, we managed to with the help of a puter friend. PC runs fine now with the new hard drive in.

I've had a couple that were a biatch to get rid of (on customers machines of course....) Sometimes it's easier and quicker just to get the data off and re-install the machine. No need to buy a new disk though, just wipe the old disk and install onto it once it's empty (backing data up first though).

On another note, I've not found norton to be the best product, it's very very good at slowing machines down but not great at protecting them. Always used to use McAfee on my own machines, currently having a play with AVG (it's free) and it seems okay.

It's also worth getting anti-spyware stuff, lavasoft's ad-aware and spybot search & destroy are both pretty good. Also get Windows Defender from microsoft installed, that's pretty good as well.

HTH

Danny

 

[Marky Mark]

Can vouch for AVG too. It's a Grisoft product.

 

[nigelH]

Can vouch for AVG too. It's a Grisoft product.

I'm running AVG here too.
The network multiuser license.
I like to think that's why I know very little about viruses these days.

Well... Also I read mail as text only so no buttons, no executables, no nasties and no pictures.

 

[Getafix]

Spybot search and destroy is good, but you still get problems then have to scan to remove them.

Spyware Blaster actually helps stop the computer being infected in the first place. Used in conjunction (and with Ad-aware) they are a neat defence.

AVG free seems pretty good to me.

Alan

 

[RonProwse]

Nortons Anti Virus is a waste of time and money, use either AVG or Avast i used to use AVG but as i had it installed on 4 computers it kept poping up messages. Gone over to Avast now much better, has for spyware MS Defender seem to work well assuming you have a proper copy of windows!

one other thing Avast will do a scan after you install it from a reboot so it might help get rid of the Virus

 

[Rob Dobson]

Norton is utter pants - bin it. IE is a virus magnet - bin that too. MSN is a PITA and a virus magnet as well so delete that whilst you are at it.

Replace IE with Firefox or Opera. Replace MSN, Yahoo, ICQ etc with GAIM (download from sourceforge) and re-enable all of your accounts on the one client.

Avast AVG is very good but doesn't stop everything and is of little use once you have been infected.

Spybot is fun but the guy that used to develop it lost interest sometime ago and doesn't update it too much these days.

Now that you have an issue down load Prevx1 to fix it - it's free and superb at removing the thing that's causing you the issue and probably a load of other stuff you didn't know you had (Malware, Spyware and viruses).

HTH

 

[Sparky750]

I use zonealram security suite seems much better than norton then run a anti virus freebe thing once a month or so.

 

[David G]

Following this guide through might help...it certainly helped me recover from the bsod with a laptop my sister had 'exposed naked' to the www.

Took quite a while though:

You Must Read This Before Posting A Hijackthis Log - Geeks to Go!

David.

 

[Paul Oliver]

Take it to the little computer shop in Chestfield opposite the green, he can fix it all in about 4 hours.

Did mine no problems, and no you cannot get out of teaching at Leybourne tomorrow while you drop it off Thats what Him Indoors is for

 

[Debs]

ha ha

After re-installing norton and then scanning the computer 3 times, swearing at it profusely and refusing to allow the kids to use msn the 'pute seems to be working - I'll give it a couple of days before breathing easy!

 

[milldog]

try this from my web site UK Forces - Laptop Downloads

Graham

 

[Debs]

Thanks for all the advice, I've now ordered AVG 7.5 so fingers crossed it can find the virus thats causing my computer to run very slowly.