There's a special place in Hades for virus creators.....

[Navy Chief]

For the past few days, I've noticed some irregularities in the way my Windows 7 has been working. Little things, like a popup every time I start IE, asking if I want BING or Yahoo to be the search engine. And each time, I say NO. Yet it pops up again on start up.

And also, a lot of websites are not coming up. I just get errors.

I am fairly certain the culprit is a virus. And not an easy one to eradicate.

Most likely I will end up doing a complete reformat of that hard drive, and reinstalling Windows 7.

For now, I am back to Vista.

Virus creators; what is their motive, other than the obvious one of creating misery?

I just don't get it.

NC

 

[Brian_Gladden]

Try Malwarebytes Chief. Seems to work the best of em all and it's free.

 

[jim]

BUY the Malwarebytes package & run it thru all the system every week.

 

[Bjoern]

Virus creators; what is their motive, other than the obvious one of creating misery?

I just don't get it.

What about showing up loopholes in security.

There's always two sides to blame. The virus crating one being the obvious one, users with sloppy computer security being the often overlooked other one.

No offense, NC.
At least a freeware, always up-to-date antivirus program and a firewall (in your router or on your PC) are mandatory elements of a secure internet-capable PC.

 

[MaddogK]

If history repeats itself it will be YEARS before Microsoft plugs all the security holes in it's newest OS.

Have a nice ride Chief.

 

[tigisfat]

Virus creators; what is their motive, other than the obvious one of creating misery?

I just don't get it.

NC

For one, identity theft. Most people don't freak out and notify anyone if the only things they notice are wierd popups and an inability to access certain sites. Most of these viruses take a while to show themselves, too. I promise I'm no tinfoil hat wearer when I say that giving your card online isn't safe anymore. Secure websites have absolutely no bearing on certain virus-ridden computers. I usually have one thing or another wrong with my computer, despite running combofix and Kaspersky labs from time to time. Kaspersky is never getting my money again. It 'detects' stuff all the time, but it feels more like owning a security dog that only barks at the mailman. When it does find viruses, it doesn't deal with them correctly and they never go away, even after "applying the fix".

Sometimes, I'd rather live with these viruses and not put anything personal besides pics on my computers. It's not worth the reformatting to me always.

 

[flyer01]

NC, try this.

http://pcwizkidstechtalk.com/index.php/malware-removal.html


flyer01:salute:

 

[Roadburner440]

I cannot stand virus creators. The same thing can be said for thieves, robbers, and other such deviants. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do but spend our own hard earned $$ buying stuff to protect ourselves, or curtailing our own habits to protect our computers. I definately get mad, especially when a halfway decent PC cost at least $500... that is why I don't ever go online with my FSX computer. I just hope you are able to sort out your issues NC, and hopefully it hasn't messed up any of your computers components.

 

[brad kaste]

....I can vouch for the Malwarebytes app program. It's a winner. You can download either the freebie or the payware versions,...which is a one time fee for $24.95. It saved my bacon last year. I just upgraded to the payware version in which you get a few more features. But the free one does a great job too.

 

[frankwi]

When I get a virus, I used to go through all the mess of trying to run programs to eliminate it. A very time and patience consuming process. However, the last two times I was hit, I calmly fixed the problem completely in about 5 minutes. How. you ask ? Easy !

If you have backup and restore turned on in your PC, simply go to a restore point some time before you noticed things got infected. In my case I was surfing both times and everything was fine and then POW - "your computer may be infected, let me run a scan for you. Then for $50 you can buy this POS software to remove what we just put on your PC..." At that point you know you've been nailed and can run all the software packages you want, with mixed results. Or, do what I do...

Go to a restore point for the day before, load it and WALLAH ! Virus gone. I am running XP but the other OS's have the same options, I think.

 

[safn1949]

I run Avast and Malwarebytes on Windows 7,we have 4 computers on the internet in this house,2 laptops on Windows 7 and 2 desktops on XP. I also moderate a huge internet forum and spend a lot of time surfing around edgy sites as part of that.

I don't have any problems.I scan my computers regularity and fix any minor infestations I might have,mostly spyware trackers and go on with it.You have to be pro active and take the time to clean stuff up weekly.Don't use IE,it's a POS and a serious security risk,don't use Windows Media Player.Same thing.Microsoft Office = crappy.

There are so many alternate,free programs that work better out there,don't even get me started with Adobe Acrobat,what a horror story.Feel free to ask me what I use and what works and I'll bet it ain't made by Microsoft except the OS.:d

 

[gigabyte]

For the past few days, I've noticed some irregularities in the way my Windows 7 has been working. Little things, like a popup every time I start IE, asking if I want BING or Yahoo to be the search engine. And each time, I say NO. Yet it pops up again on start up.

And also, a lot of websites are not coming up. I just get errors.

I am fairly certain the culprit is a virus. And not an easy one to eradicate.

Most likely I will end up doing a complete reformat of that hard drive, and reinstalling Windows 7.

For now, I am back to Vista.

Virus creators; what is their motive, other than the obvious one of creating misery?

I just don't get it.

NC

Chief, you may or may not be infected, what you are describing could very well be just a couple of settings in the IE Options menu - especially the search request. Go to Tools > Internet Options, then select the "Programs Tab, click the "Manage Add on's" Button. You will find options for Tool Bars, the search engins, Accelerators and a couple of other things, go into the Search options and select one as the default and disable or remove all of the others. You should do the same with the Accelerators, and especially the Tool Bars, they can be a real PITA. I generally check the tool bars section every time I install any new progeam or game because so many now try to add a tool bar and it gets crazy.

As for the problem with some web pages, that could be Malware and as others have mentioned Malware bytes is an excellent choice, I also keep SpyBot Search and Destroy handy, as I find I often have to use both to track down some of the new Malware code.

Here is another tip for web page redirect problems, check your "Hosts" file, it is a text file that is not much used now, but ie still follows any instructions in there. If you have been hit with a redirect you will sometimes find entries there that point legit sites to bogus or non existant IP Addresses, for the most part there is normally only the Local Host entry - see below for an example;

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
-------------------------
If you find additional entries like the ones below and they are sites that are giving you problems I would recommend just renaming the file to HOSTS.BAK (just to be sure) then reboot, if your problems go away - problem solved.

102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

There is no reason that I am aware of today that anyone needs entries in a hosts file for a home system, if you are on a business network with legacy applications it might be required, but evene that is very rare in my experience.

Host file redirection is a very old trick and often forgotten about, I have found it twice in the past couple weeks on systems in our network so it looks like sone miscreitans are trying old tricks just to see if they work.