Windows XP Professional SP2 suspected malware

[mbowman]

Hello,

My machine started acting up about a month ago, and I couldn't tie the behavior to anything specific. I have been using AVG Free 8.0 version for virus protection; I haven't done regular system scans as I should have, but will occasionally do one when the operating system acts funny. My machine has randomly started shutting down, and a few times I have seen a message about a problem with .NET just before it happens. So I used DotNetChecker & Cleaner, and sure enough, my .NET 1.0, 1.1, & 3.0 & up were not checking out correctly. I uninstalled and reinstalled the 1.0 & 1.1, but when I went to reinstall the 3.0 I began running into problems. I did a Google search on the error messages I received, and got an exact match in a thread on your Virus & Malware removal forums. I suspected malware initially (a month ago), but nothing out of the ordinary showed up in my AVG scan, so I dropped it. But I decided to do the 8-step preliminary removal instructions as instructed on your site, and will be posting my information here. Thanks for your help! I will post the results from each step as a separate thread as I go.

 

[mbowman]

Virus scan

I uninstalled AVG and installed Avast and did a scan. No results reported. Then I uninstalled that and installed Avira and did a scan. This time a file was found: toprates.dll.bac_a00640, a mild Trojan that monitors internet activity. But the odd thing was that the scan found it in a quarantine folder set up by a previous Housecall scan that I did back when I first started having problems. I repaired the problem. I'll continue to follow the steps and see what happens next.

 

[mbowman]

System shutdown symptom

On another note, I mentioned that what alerted me to the possibility of a problem was that my computer was shutting down randomly. It also seemed to be getting very warm; warmer than I would expect since it is attached to a docking station that allows for air flow under and around the machine. So I tried a can of compressed air applied liberally to the fan vents, and haven't had a sudden shutdown since. Makes me feel kind of silly, but that's one thing that's been going on that doesn't take an exceptionally technical fix.

 

[mbowman]

Post #4

I have to have 5 posts in order to share the link to the resource I used to deal with my .NET problems. So this is post #4.

 

[mbowman]

Post #5

And post #5...

 

[mbowman]

.NET

Finally...Got my .NET issue resolved by using the .NET cleaner tool to blow them all away and start completely over. If anyone has .NET issues, I recommend the following site: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/articles/454956.aspx. Lots of good information on .NET trouble.