Living with gadcom.exe?

[Lindae]

Hello

After becoming inflicted with this nasty little trojanesq virus - I went to google to see what I could do to get rid of it. Everything seemed too complicated. My McAfee (free with cox cable internet) couldn't even find it and remove it.
So, I figured to mess with it myself:

I decided to delete it. Cannot be done.

I then decided to change its location and move it to a new folder on the desktop - since I couldn't delete it I wasn't sure I would be "allowed" to move it...but it moved to its new folder no problem. It also couldn't be "found" back in its old folder.

Okay - I thought genius that's done...I also thought I could then do the same thing and move to a cd and just get it off the computer altogether but that didn't work. At least it was not where the program that wrote said to look for it...but my troubles were not over. It was in my registry and still working behind the scenes...so my brother comes over and decides to rename it from gadcom.exe to gadcom.wpd (or whatever) then checks it off the registry start up. This seems to work. While it is still in the computer the program has no idea how to find it to get it going.

It only ever got in because my daughter was on with Picaboo tech support to make a wedding album and couldn’t download the program - they told her to turn off the firewall - never told her to turn it back on and she has no clue so unbeknownst to me - we were not protected in the very easiest of ways.

I ran Ccleaner - and now run the windows firewall and the free version of the Mcafee antivirus program so I hope this thing won't activate again...any idea if this is the best fix for an untechy like me?

 

[brucethetech]

I personally have not had to deal with gadcom yet but if it is anything like any other stubborn virus out there you will have to venture out into the "land of complicated". The EASIEST way to TRY to get this thing off is boot your computer in safe mode and try to remove it. Note that this is not an effective way of removing a well written virus so don't get your hopes up. but you can always post a hijackthis log.

 

[Lindae]

what is a hijackthis log?

 

[Seipher]

I just spent my hole night fighting with gadcom.exe myself. I created a post for it simply called "gadcom.exe" if you want to search for it. pretty much has details of how I resolved it.

techspot.com has a 8 step removal process for (i think most all virus's, trojans, spyware). It does take a few hours to read carefuly the 8 steps, download all the software you need, and run all the scans. However, it does look like I completely removed any implications of this virus. It may be to soon to tell, but i no longer have the popups, or gadcom.exe running as a process and most my other system files seem to check out.

Id link the gadcom.exe thread but it seems i have to have more than 5 posts lol. A quick search in the forums should find it though.

 

[Lindae]

thanks I'll check it out now. I will be doing the 8 steps - later today or tomorrow. I just don't have all the time it takes to fix this - I wish instead of creating these virus' the virus creators would put their knowledge to good use....

 

[Seipher]

lol I was quoting the same thoughts last night to myself. Where do they get the time for this. It took me probably 7 hours to clean it off (mainly cause I had to read so much and learn before i could even begin taking the steps). If it took me 7 hours, I wonder how many it took them to design it.