WinAntivirus & WinAntiSpyware / Norton 360 / VIRUS REMOVAL?

[Erin.r.jackson]

Hi there,

I clicked on a link yesterday that immediately resulted in a bunch of popups and weird new programs being installed on my went to a site yesterday afternoon.

Since doing the research here and elsewhere, I realized that the virus software I've had for over a year WinAntiVirus Pro 2006 and the spyware removal tool I was duped into buying yesterday - WinAntiSpyware Pro 2007 were rogue programs . Up until yesterday I'd never had a problem, But I uninstalled both and all the false notifications stopped, but Im still getting a bunch of popups. I can access the internet and basically everything else though it takes forever...

Downloaded Norton 360 b/c a friend told me it was better but I cant get it to complete a scan. So then I came here and read and I uninstalled Norton so that I could try some of the cleaning recommendations -- with the intent of reinstalling Norton once things were better. In my "program files" there are a bunch of new programs I've never heard of and I cant delete them from the control panel.

Can someone tell me if Norton 360 is a good program and how exactly I should proceed. I have copied the link for the thread with the 15 steps to clean, but I just want to make sure thats the best thing for me to do when I get home.

I really appreciate your help. I dont know much about this kind of thing, and I am in no position to purchase a new computer.

Erin

 

[howard_hopkinso]

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

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

Also, let me know the results of the AVG Antirootkit scan.

Personally, I recommend you stay well away from Norton altogether. There are far better alternatives out there. You`ll find links to some top notch programmes in the instructions and they are all free.

Regards Howard

This thread is for the use of Erin.r.jackson 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.

 

[Erin.r.jackson]

Thank you very much, I do use my system for online banking and other business related functions.

What do I do if I want to do a reinstall? Will that erase all my programs? files?

Are there instructions for that procedure on here as well?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Yes, reformatting will erase all data on your hard drive. You will therefore need to backup your important data prior to the reformat. You should also contact you bank and other financial institutions etc and tell them your computer has been compromised.

Follow the guide below to formatting your system.

You need to do the following.

Diconnect from the net and don`t reconnect, until you have your firewall software installed.

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 drive.

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. Install whatever drivers you need, then run Windows updates.

Finally, install whatever programmes/software you want.

Regards Howard

This thread is for the use of Erin.r.jackson 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.