Virus be all over my PC!

[WhiteX]

I do not know what to do anymore, my MSN messenger does not loads up correctly, it goes automaticaly to the sys tray and if i try to type my passport, it gets really slow and then crashes.

My favorites folder has a "forum" subfolder, that crashes IE every time i try to open it and all the antivirus softwares i installed, one after the unof the other, keeps on scanning incoming emails, but i do not use M$ outlook, i go webmail.

Not Etrust EZ antivirus nor Avast! or Norton found a single Virii on my PC

Can someone shed a light into this one?

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

as i said before

try the demos on these sites out

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/1113091578
http://www.ewido.net/en/download/

and Microsoft has a free anti spy program

also go http://pcpitstop.com/ and test your pc

I encourage you to go to pcpitstop.com they'll test your pc for free
and they are 100% safe

i use them every week to test for any problems that may not even exist
and I encourage you to do the same

then if the tests say u have problem/bug they'll tell u where exactly where it exists

I also encourage you to go ot and www.ewido.net after pcpitstop and
download there 14 day demo and scan your full pc with it

it finds all sorts of bugs/spyware/viruses

 

[LazerTag]

Does sound more like a case of spyware.

Hijack This or Microsoft's new Anti-Spyware work quite well for tracking things down and removal.

Worst case, If using Windows XP, make backup as needed, boot from your original XP CD, goto the second selection of "Repair mode" (not the first one) and allow it to attempt a repair. I would say 85% or so times I've done this it has corrected something that has gone awry in Windows. Of course when it's complete you may need to run all your Windows updates again.

Anyway just a suggestion. I always hate things like this and usually find myself doing this for our sales staff at work. Those peeps couldn't protect their computer if their lives depended on it.

 

[WhiteX]

this is the sad outcome of a research on antivirus quality, i always used norton and never had problems, but my clients keep on asking me about a free alternative, so i tested them on my own pc and this is what happened, i´ll try the spyware thingie and post afterwards.

EDIT1: it will be a long night, the pit stop and hijack this gave me jack, the Windows guard could not be applied here because of "other problems".

EDIT2: it seems to be a security issue between MSN and Winx XP SP2, however i dot not seem to have any of the keys to fix it so i went trillian, only the crashing folder remains.

EDIT3: the email scanning stopped, i got some IPs and blacklisted them on Win Firewall.

 

[smcd]

You might also try http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html to check for "rootkit" enabled spyware. We had some show up at work and it was quite an ordeal to get it removed.

 

[arnalion]

The biggest virus of them all is Windows...
Big exploited virus programs like Norton etc aren't as safe as people thinks. Many viruses creates especially for those programs. I'm using NOD32 as virus program today, it doesn't take half of the ram that Norton uses and it's updated almost every day, sometimes several times. Everyting that has a Microsoft stamp on it is a safe risk to use. So get rid of IE and use Firefox instead , it's a much better browser anyway (safer too). A good firewall is also needed for a safe system. I'll hope no one here uses Windows own because it's full of security leaks. Nortons firewall can be annoying to use when it chooses by itself what programs to trust or not, even if you allow it.

 

[WhiteX]

Now the situation is...

i keep getting unwelcome email, mostly from messagelabs, but avast! seems to block them, i want to block those emails from even coming but i lack knowledge of a good free firewall.

MSN was solved by going trillian.

Dunno if Firefox could help on these problems and the subfolder to "my favorites" still crashes the comp.

 

[arnalion]

Na Firefox will probably not help you with this... but it's a great browser . You probably got hotmail right? Add filters that tosses the mails directly when you get them.

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

have u done a full anti virus scan lately?
and have you done the ewido scan yet?
from what i here you may have trojan horse

 

[ShadowDamien]

AAHHH!!!
Trojan Horse!!!
My friend got that after downloading hentai off of another friend using MSN messenger. Did you download anything using MSN Messenger?

 

[smcd]

A firewall won't stop messages from reaching your PC, by the way

 

[flow``]

why don't you just reformat your pc...

takes about 2 hours? ish, maybe 3 to re-install/update everything but thats no biggie

it would be the easiest way to start over with a fresh install instead of trying to solve your problems one by one

 

[bcrew1375]

Yeah, but if you have alot of data or programs, it's a pain to back them all up or reinstall them.

 

[ShadowDamien]

And the massively amount of games that almost all of us have on our compy's will be a pain in the ass to re-intall.

 

[Blacklord]

hmmm. Try this: http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html worked like a charm for me.

 

[WhiteX]

i ran all kinds of antivirus software, i made the all the online scannings and ran several anti spyware programs, no virus was found.

I use yahoo! mail directly from the website and i have my outlook disabled so the incoming emails were, most likely, malicious software coming through some security hole, Zone alarm took care of them, the first time i entered the web it showed me that one IP adress was trying to reach me and i denied it, ever since, no more ghost emails.
The computer is fine, besides this ackward "favorites subfolder issue" wich i came up with its "modus operandi", well, if i clear myself from all the cookies, the subfolder opens nice, now the folder is the "forums" one, so at the pace i get into the forums, the subfolder begins to crash, i´ll try to narrow it to a single forum´s cookie and tell later.

Oh! by the way, i kinda need to fix it because it can be crucial to the knowledge of a good AntiVirus/Firewall combo, so i can use them on clients.
It all started when i decided to go with Etrust EZ antivirus for testing purposes, all of a sudden all those problems appeared so i am positive that a combo that makes it work will be sucessfull to install on my clients.

 

[Sola Kusanagi]

hmmmm ZA is good but it dont want to block port 60

if u want to always know what ips are trying to connect to u use Peer Guardian2 a simple ip blocker for ppl who pirate alot of illigal files

http://phoenixlabs.org/

its safe give it a try

 

[Doomulation]

Sometimes, as our computer grows older, we stack up a lot of programs and crap we don't need. Once in a while, to delete it all and make a clean install would be nice. Just backup all your registration data if you have any, for the programs, backup the saves for your games and clean the whole thing out of there.
And reinstalling Windows will make sure that you (hopefully) get rid of all your problems.

 

[WhiteX]

it was formatted 6 months ago, it is running fine now, aside the subfolder thingie, I guess till tomorrow everything will be sorted out.

EDIT: And it is, i got Firefox´d!