Psw.x-vir Trojan

[navyspy007]

I'm in need of assistance. I believe my laptop is infected with the PSW.X-Vir Trojan. I get those annoying pop ups stating that I need to download spyware. I know this trojan is a antispyware virus. It's been on my laptop for about a week now. (What damage to you think has occurred on my laptop for waiting so long???)

I've seen some threads on this forum about this topic during my research and it is one of the reasons why I have decided to ask for assistance. If ANYONE can help me fix this, please reply!

Also, I am not sure if this related to this problem or not, however, after I noticed those pop ups, I was getting this error when I powered off/restart the laptop:

pmsnrr.exe - DLL Initialization failed

Thank you all for your time.

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

I have moved your thread to the correct forum.

Very Important: Before deciding whether you should clean or reformat your system, go and read this thread HERE and decide what it is you want to do.

If after reading the above, you wish to clean your system, do the following.

Go to add remove programmes in your control panel and uninstall anything to do with(if there).

VideoActiveXObject.

Close control panel.

Then, go and read the Viruses/Spyware/Malware, preliminary removal instructions. Follow all the instructions exactly.

Post fresh HJT and AVG Antispyware logs as attachments into this thread, only after doing the above.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

This thread is for the use of navyspy007 only. Please don`t post your own virus/spyware problems in this thread. Instead, open a new thread in our security and the web forum.

 

[navyspy007]

Thank You

Thank you so much! I will start on these steps right away.

Will this require the reformating of my hard drive? If so, I did a back up of my system about 2 weeks ago. Correct me if I am wrong, but will this help me from losing everything on my hard drive?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

It`s for you to decide whether you wish to clean or reformat your system. That`s why I gave you this link HERE, to try and make it easier for you to make the decision.

Regards Howard

 

[navyspy007]

Thank you for sending me that link. It seems like I will not clean the system, but instead format it. The information you posted describe what I would have to do to clean the hard drive. Are the procedures to format a hard drive difficult?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Ok, no problem. here are instructions on how to format and reinstall Windows.

Disconnect from the internet and do not reconnect, until you have installed your Firewall software.

You need to do the following.

1 Restart your computer and go to setup usually by pressing the F2 or delete key.

2 Once you get into setup look for the boot menu and make sure you set it to boot from cd first followed by your hard drive.

3 Put the Windows xp disk into your cd.

4 Now save your settings and exit setup.

5 While your computer is booting you will see a message that says "press any key to boot from cd" press any key.

6 When the welcome to setup screen appears press enter and then press F8 to accept the Microsoft licence agreement.

7 You will be prompted to repair an installation press the escape key.

8 Now select the partition that you want to reformat and press the D key to delete it you will be asked to confirm that you want to delete the partition.

9 Now press C to create a brand new partition you will be asked what size you want the partition to be in mega bytes. If you just press enter then the partition will be the maximum size that you can have. This is perfectly ok if you don`t want to create multiple partitions.

10 You will now be asked to format the partition select the ntfs file sytem and do a full format.

11 Once the format is complete setup will continue.

Your computer will restart during the remaining setup again you will be asked to press any key to boot from cd DO NOT PRESS ANYTHING and setup will continue. Once the setup is complete and you are back in Windows remove the Windows cd from your cd drive.

Install your Firewall software and reconnect to the net, followed by any drivers you need. Run Windows updates, then install your Antivirus software. Finally, install your programmes/software.

Regards Howard

This thread is for the use of navyspy007 only. Please don`t post your own virus/spyware problems in this thread. Instead, open a new thread in our security and the web forum.

 

[navyspy007]

I feel like a freakin' ***** here! I'm at my setup window. I press F2 when restarting and I am there. I went to the boot menu and moved the BOOT option 1st and then moved the HDD 2nd as per your instructions. However, I can not switch my option to "Boot to CD". This is what is there:

1: Boot to LAN: B02 D00 Yukon PXE

I'm looking all around that Boot menu on how I can change the value from "Boot to LAN" to "Boot to CD"! Any suggestions?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

You need to set your boot order to cd-rom/hard drive. then with your Windows cd in your cd-rom drive save and exit bios.

Your mobo manual should tell you how to set your boot priority.

Regards Howard

 

[navyspy007]

I am assuming that the "mobo" is the mother board. Well, looks like I am SOL because I do not have a manual for my motherboard. It's a GATEWAY Laptop that I bought at Circuit City.

 

[howard_hopkinso]

In that case, there`s a good chance that if you restart your computer with the Windows cd in the cd drive, it`ll attempt to boot from it automatically. You`ll know if it gives you the "Press any key to boot from cd" message.

Regards Howard