Computer F'd Please help

[[censored]]

Something has happened to my computer which is causing problems using the internet. Periodically my browser will be unable to find sites like 2+2 or anywhere else. Currently MSN messanger can't connect. AVG is prementenly unable to get the latest update even when everything else is working and I can manually access the site. This all happened last night when somehow Norton Internet security was disabled for the entire night. Any Ideas what is going on?

[Dead]

Perhaps a worm.

[[censored]]

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps a worm.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what I am thinking, any ideas how to get rid of it?

[pshreck]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps a worm.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what I am thinking, any ideas how to get rid of it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Easiest way.... reformat.

[Boris]

I just had the same problem. download and run Ad-Aware SE Personal. It's free. I did a scan and everything seems to be working now. I have no idea why.

[Dead]

Download Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware.
Run them.


Google those names for the links.

And... don't listen to pshreck about this.

[TStoneMBD]

definitely a huge spyware/virus problem. youre pretty much fked at this point. try to get any some spyware/antivirus software, but it probably wont work. use system restore if possible, you wont have it for long. the same thing happened to me a few months ago. i think your best bet is to back up everything on your drive at this point, because its going down. i had to reinstall windows as the virus knocked everything out. it started out fairly harmless;

my internet would go down periodically, but would work again after a while or would work again with are restart

my virus shield would not open when i clicked on it

so i decided to reinstall my virus shield, and had to get a link from the internet. so i went to some sites like download.com and typed in "virus shield" in the search, and as soon as i clicked enter the browser would immediately close. there were several other trigger words that would autoclose my browser such as virus, spyware, firewall, norton, mcafee, etc. i couldnt go to any anti-virus site or search for anything antivirus related at any search engine.

i then tried using system restore but it wouldnt open on my computer. i finally figured out a way to use it (forgot how) and even though i restored to several months beforehand, it didnt do anything to help.

internet soon started to only work for 15 seconds after i turned on my computer, and then would immediately be disabled.

soon enough, my computer would crash as soon as windows loaded and couldnt even get into safe mode.

[Dead]

I don't think it's a virus.

[TStoneMBD]

it was definitely a virus that caused my problem, not spyware. what originally happened was that norton found a virus in svchost somehow, and could not delete it or repair it because its a major computer application. even after updates on norton i couldnt fix it. adaware, spybot and other antivirus utilities i downloaded off download.com didnt work. so i gave up and just hoped it wouldnt progress into anything severe.

[[censored]]

[ QUOTE ]
Download Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware.
Run them.


Google those names for the links.

And... don't listen to pshreck about this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yah I have both and each time I run them I get 1 critical object which then gets removed.

[pshreck]

Reformat.

[[censored]]

[ QUOTE ]
I just had the same problem. download and run Ad-Aware SE Personal. It's free. I did a scan and everything seems to be working now. I have no idea why.

[/ QUOTE ]

I ran it to and now browsing seems to work but I still can update any of the antivirus software.

[TStoneMBD]

game over.

[JaBlue]

i've heard you need a bowl of milk to do this

[[censored]]

[censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] this sucks

[TimM]

check your hosts file by running this command:

notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

On most systems there should only be a bunch of comment lines starting with #, and then the following:

127.0.0.1 localhost

Make sure you scroll down if possible. This is just a hunch so if you find anything, let me know and I can tell you more. If there is nothing else, try this scanner:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

[[censored]]

Ya that was normal.

I've disconnected and ran adaware and spybot. MSN is connecting again, browsing seems normal and all the spyware programs can connect and update. The only program still not working is AVG which is not being allowed to connect and updatge.

I don't know it's better now, the spyware isn't reappearing. Thanks for everyone's help.

[skoal2k4]

what version of windows you running?

I had a similar problem... I had some sort of adware that was hogging my bandwidth... I'd run ad-aware and xoftspy, but they couldn't find anything. The way I found it, was I did ctrl+alt+del (I'm running win98SE) and looked at programs running. Any program (or process) that I wasn't sure about, I'd right down the name of it and google it. Eventually I came across my problem and found out how to remove it. You might want to give this a try if you get any more problems

[mikeyvegas]

[ QUOTE ]
Reformat.

[/ QUOTE ]

format c: /y

[stankybank]

nope but my laptop keeps rebooting on its own whenever it wants to but usually when I'm on the web. Could be virus related but I'm too lazy to check it out. I think I shall.

[MicroBob]

Looks like my problem is similar. Mine started Thursday in the afternoon (as far as i could tell anyway...didn't detect it before then anyway).



i just finished a full-deal scan with Norton and it was unable to delete a couple of files.

Will try a system-restore at some point perhaps.

Right now it's pretty harmless.....I am ONLY unable to access one type of website.
blogspot.com and blogger.com (which are one and the same as far as I can tell) get the 'this document contains no data' on firefox and the general 'this page not available' or whatever the hell it is on IE.

Thus I can't update my blog....nor can I even contribute in the comments.
I thought perhaps that their site was down....but someone was able to make a comment on my blog (which I can't do) so I determined that I got some worm or virus or something which is blocking me from that site.


Obviously not being able to update or edit my blog is not exactly the worst thing in the world....but I don't want the problem to spread and hope that a system restore does the trick.


I've never reformatted before and am incredibly computer ignorant so I'm a little gun-shy about trying it....but obviously may need to if the restore doesn't work.

[[censored]]

I did a system restore but it did not do anything. However I have fixed the problem.

First thing is to download Ad aware and Spybot.

Then I physically disconnected my computer from the internet and ran both of those.

I checked the windows firewall which had been altered. I enabled it and then made sure the avginet.exe (AVG free edition) had an exception.

I restarted my computer and enabled the protections from something like spyware blaster.

I reconnected, ran a quick update from AVG.

Everything has worked perfectly for me.

I also had to delete my default profile from firefox and start a new one but I am not sure if it was connected.

Everything has been working great since.

[skoal2k4]

[ QUOTE ]

I've never reformatted before and am incredibly computer ignorant so I'm a little gun-shy about trying it....but obviously may need to if the restore doesn't work.


[/ QUOTE ]

Since you say you're computer ignorant, I just want to point out that formatting will completely wipe out your drive... you'll have to restore everything from backup. And it does no good to restore from backup if your backup is also infected!

try surfing to that site through a proxy like http://www.anonymizer.com/

just enter the site at the top of the page... that should at least get you onto your blogger page while you try to fix your problem

[MicroBob]

Was able to get to blogger.com via the anonymizer thing...although for some reason I can't seem to sign-in. I type my username and password in the spaces but there's nothing else to hit (seems that the button that says 'sign in' is missing...not sure).


Again..this isn't a big deal.
The fact that my system-restore did not help me to access the page normally is the greater concern of course.



The programs and other stuff that [censored] is talking about are not familiar to me.
I have hopes that I can figure out all his steps in there...but there's a good chance that I will get stuck on a couple of them.


For example:
[ QUOTE ]

I checked the windows firewall which had been altered. I enabled it and then made sure the avginet.exe (AVG free edition) had an exception.

---------------------------------------

I reconnected, ran a quick update from AVG.

[/ QUOTE ]


both don't mean much to me.

I don't even know if I have a windows firewall or how to see if it is altered....and i don't know what the avginet.exe exception is (sounds like it is something extra that he has since he seems to have run the update from this same thing in the next step).


Anyway...I'll get back to work on this tomorrow and will try to figure all this crap out.
Thanks for the suggestions and ideas.


If I need to re-format I think I will just take it to a shop and get them to help me with this. (best way to go about it??).
I guess I can try to save as much stuff as possible that needed a CD (printer settings, wireless mouse) and stuff like pokertracker (not the end of the world if it's lost).

[[censored]]

If you go to control panel, then security then windows firewall.

Make sure it is on. Then go the expceptions tab. The Avginet.exe is the program file which does the updating of AVG free edition (virus software). By creating an exception I am allowing it to access the internet.

AD Aware (http://www.download.com/3000-8022-10319876.html)

Spy Bot (http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10289035.html?tag=lst-0-1)

[MicroBob]

ok.
thanks

tomorrow in post-coffee mode I intend on tackling this little issue.

beddie-bye for now. will let you know how it goes.

thanks for the ideas.
hope iyour remedies work on my computer also.

[mostsmooth]

[ QUOTE ]
Something has happened to my computer which is causing problems using the internet. Periodically my browser will be unable to find sites like 2+2 or anywhere else. Currently MSN messanger can't connect. AVG is prementenly unable to get the latest update even when everything else is working and I can manually access the site. This all happened last night when somehow Norton Internet security was disabled for the entire night. Any Ideas what is going on?

[/ QUOTE ]
comcast was down in my area yesterday most of the night. this was south jersey though. i had similar troubles as you.
did you call your provider?

[MicroBob]

update....

i just logged-on and am now able to access the pages that weren't available to me before. seemed to be running faster too. For a little bit I thought it was fine....

but now a couple other pages seem to be messed up.

oh well.

[DeathbySuckout]

All of you guys running Ad-Aware and Spybot, you should do it every now and then in "Safe Mode". Some of these programs and browser hijackers do not get deleted if they are running. "Safe Mode" keeps these from loading at start up so that they can be deleted.