A warning .............

[Mpprh]

Hi

I thought I was pretty well protected ........ belt & braces ?

I have :

Grisoft AVG 7 with daily updates

Spybot

Zone alarm

This morning, the machine was a bit slow firing up ............. and I said yes to the firewall for what looked like a genuine file.

Then I find a new toolbar, new items in favourites, new items on desktop, new home page.

Then I remember adaware. I had an old version and it was rumoured that it wouldn't be updated, so I installed Spybot and forgot it.

Having downloaded the latest adaware it found 497 items. The normal cookies remembering recently visited files, passwords, etc. were about 50 items. So I had about 450 items to delete.

So, the message is, you can never be too careful ?

Peter

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Hi Peter

When did you last update ZoneAlarm? It should check for updates in the background but you do need to intervene to install the updates. A good place to check your firewall integrity is www.grc.com - has a utility called Shields Up which reports on how well protected you are. As well as updates of my installed antivirus I also signed up for new virus notifications from another one of the big AV vendors so I know what's out there. If anyone wants more info send me a PM.

 

[Boghound]

[quote]HiI thought I was pretty well protected ........ belt & braces ?I have :Grisoft AVG 7 with daily updatesSpybotZone alarmThis morning, the machine was a bit slow firing up ............. and I said yes ...[/quote]

If you found that many "infidels" and you have a new home page, search page etc. It's best to turn off "System Restore" before you run Spybot etc because when you boot again, you may find the "infidels" have come back. (Have to use "infidels" because the tree hugging mamby pambys won't let grown-ups use the word b****rs)

[Mpprh]

hi

seems to be all ok now

b*******'s

peter

[Suninfrance]

Hi Mpprh

Seems you and I had similar problems at about the same time.

My PC seemed to be getting slower and slower with more and more error messages last week.

Ran Adaware and found a couple of "bad" cookies.  Didn't think much about it as I quarantined them.  Logged onto the internet and found my browser page changed from Wanadoo to AboutBlank (which I gather is notoriously difficult to get rid of).

I'm covered by NAV and Firewall, have Adaware.  I downloaded a spyware detector from the internet and there my troubles REALLY started.  Ended up with a Trojan Horse (which NAV didn't pick up), 2 very bad cookies, and CWS Hijacker. 

As I am not technically minded, it has cost me a fortune ringing my brother back in England and getting instructions from him.  However, it got to the point where my computer completely seized.  It took 3 days and the only thing I can do now is completely wipe my hard drive and start again.

Fortunately I had another computer lurking in a cupboard (not quite as high spec, but a PC nevertheless) and the other will be going back to England with me, so my brother can give it a good seeing to

There are some real b******s out there.

Next stop is to invest in a pucker spyware detector programme as I gather these programmes are starting to become more of a nuisance than virus programmes.

Hope your PC is well now.

Jan

[Ecossais]

A friend of mine upgraded to Broadband in the last week or so and within a few days he encountered the same as Peter and Jan – PC running slow, home page changing to “About Blank”, new Favourites, etc.

 

This was despite having installed the 1 month trial version of McAfee Security Centre which came with the Broadband modem.

 

He too tried downloading and running Spybot, but as soon as the problems were found and removed – they reappeared.  He also bought an anti-Spyware programme but that didn’t fix the problem.

 

In the end he decided to format his hard drive, re-install all applications, bought Norton SystemWorks and Firewall and has downloaded all available Windows updates.

 

Perhaps Boghound’s suggestion of turning off System Restore before running Spybot (and then re-activating it) might have cured the problem and saved him a lot of time?  Worth trying if you encounter similar problems.

 

PS – He’s also now installing a CD recorder for making data backups!

[Mazan]

Logged onto the internet and found my browser page changed from Wanadoo to AboutBlank (which I gather is notoriously difficult to get rid of).

You seem to have that the wrong way around. "about : blank" is merely one of the three home page settings in IE (tools: options: first line down) and couldn't be easier to change. It is also the setting that I always select as it is the only one that doesn't attempt to load some enormous default webpage every time one starts IE.

Wanadoo is the thing that is difficult to get rid of and, at the risk of repeating myself for the millionth time, one should not insert the Wanadoo CDRom under any circumstances. It is NEVER needed and its use achieves nothing at all.