How to fix a virus..... - TranceAddict Forums

TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Australia
-- How to fix a virus.....

Posted by Anomyst on Sep-14-2008 01:41:

How to fix a virus.....

motherfuckennethack******s have smashed my PC to pieces with a virus. whats the best way to approach getting this fixed? (with minor damage if possible) everything is backed up and the HDD runs on a raid system so hopefully we can fix it but what are your suggestions? looks like a really nasty ****** too, PC wont detect my screen's on startup so just loads the winxp logo then blanks out. so there is no command prompt or anything.... fkn bugger! if you guys have had something similar what did you do?

cheers guys!

Posted by sunrise3500 on Sep-14-2008 01:48:

reformat. while there's probably other ways to actually fix it rather than start again, you'll never know if there's other stuff still lying in the background

Posted by AParajuli on Sep-14-2008 01:59:

as long as you have everything else on different HDD to your Windows partition then the best solution is just formatting and wiping everything off the Windows partition and re-installing Windows.

Posted by Domesticated on Sep-14-2008 02:34:

What they said.

If you have trouble formatting because you can't even start the system, do yourself a favour and pay $80 for a certified geek to repair it. It seems like a lot of money, but in the long run it's better than wasting your own time and possibly fucking your 'puter further.

Posted by limitedtimeonly on Sep-14-2008 08:23:

I gt a virus one night, rang Dell nd they got me to do a sytem restore to a time before the virus began. Simple effective way to get rid of it. It worked for me so maybe try that

Posted by limitedtimeonly on Sep-14-2008 08:24:

I got a virus one night, rang Dell nd they got me to do a sytem restore to a time before the virus began. Simple effective way to get rid of it. It worked for me so maybe try that

Posted by Anomyst on Sep-14-2008 08:57:

system restore worked a treat! cheers!

Posted by steve_may on Sep-14-2008 10:01:

benny did u just restore to previous state??
cos if its your lappy, it was gettin pretty laggy and slow, perhaps a full mega format will do the trick if you got everything already backed up. get everything all rockin again.

Posted by Darkarbiter on Sep-14-2008 10:02:

quote:
Originally posted by limitedtimeonly
I got a virus one night, rang Dell nd they got me to do a sytem restore to a time before the virus began. Simple effective way to get rid of it. It worked for me so maybe try that

There are a ton of viruses that infect system restore.

Posted by sunrise3500 on Sep-14-2008 10:27:

quote:
Originally posted by Darkarbiter

There are a ton of viruses that infect system restore.

not that just, but if the virus spread itself, or is still sitting there in just 1 exe it all comes back when you run it
and generally 1 infection means lots of other potential shits

Posted by XiTatiON on Sep-15-2008 01:05:

My advice...

Being a sys admin and all is this.

Once you have been infected with any malware or virus or whatever, you can never trust the system again. backup all your important shit to another hdd or dvd's or whatever, then re-install everything.

I know its a pain in the ass, but if you use your pc for net banking/buying shit on ebay /credit card info for tickets etc... you can understand why I'm suggesting this.

System restore can easily be infected with malware/viruses too... hence why most of the removal guides by AV companies always tell you to turn off system restore to wipe it clean.

Some new malware/viruses even effect safe mode too, so it makes it next to imposible to remove them sometimes. Also with rootkits becoming more prevalent, you can't even see the modifications to your machine, running tasks, registry entries of some viruses / malware... as far as you know your PC is fine, its all hidden in the background. (these ones are the worst to remove.)

Good luck mate

If you get real stuck/need a hand... PM me, can see if i can help.

Posted by Anomyst on Sep-15-2008 03:20:

thanks guys! yeah i think a reformat my be in order. i have a raid drive also, will i need to wipe this too? or does this all happen as a mirror to whatever i do on the master HD?

Cheers for your help guys, also whats the best AV software around these days?

Posted by XiTatiON on Sep-15-2008 03:29:

How is the raid configured?

Any files that aren't executable are fine in most cases.

Usually you can leave the second drive intact and it should be alright, just run a full virus scan over it after you do a fresh install and remove any infected files. It would only really be an issue if the particular virus you got infects other executable/file types. Most malware/viruses these days just dump an executable or a dll or 2 in a few different spots, then add themselves into the computer start up via a few different spots. So most of the time other partitions / drives are fine. But it depends what you were infected with and what it does.

NOD32 is one of the best desktop virus engines around at the moment.

The free version of AVG isn't too bad seeing as its free, but if you are happy to spend money (cough or find it another way...cough...) then NOD32 is the winner.

Don't use anything made by Symantec if you like your computer to perform well, and it doesn't tend to find any viruses anyways... POS.

Also you can run "online" virus scans using free online scan engines.
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner

I recommend those ones for online scanning.

Posted by gumble on Sep-15-2008 03:49:

quote:
Originally posted by XiTatiON

NOD32 is one of the best desktop virus engines around at the moment.

yup! love it.