Page 1 of Help ! your computer is infected....

Any help on this would be grateley appreciated.

I seem to have got a virus or spyware, it keeps popping up with the heading:-

your computer is infected, then goes on to say:- windows has detected spyware infection, and a red circle with a cross in it is also present.
I have tried all sorts to get rid but Im now at my wits end.

Help me.

Thanks

4ukinell, not sure of your technical level, so hope I`m not teaching you to suck eggs here....
Is the message that you are seeing just a pop up advertisment or is it an actual warning from an installed anti virus/spyware or other security program?
The pop ups are used to dupe people into believing that their PC is infected, so that they download another program (of dubious nature) that will confirm the infection and for a fee they`ll clean your infection( ooerr ;) ). I`ve seen this before on my nephews and nieces PCs, where they`ve seen the message, panicked, and downloaded some more junk onto their PC.
Do you have anti virus, anti spyware and a firewall installed/running?
I use AVG 7 for anti virus, Spybot-Search and Destroy and AdAware for Spyware detection along with Zone Alarm firewall (but if you have Windows Xp, it has it`s own firewall) and they are all free.
Hope it helps.

LB2


Have you tried switching it on........?

the pop up is in the task bar, with the red circle, but your right the intention is to get me to click on it, I have read some info on it but no one seems to know how to kill the bas$%^d. My anti virus software is Kaspersky, this is normally very good with this kind of stuff, I have used spysweeper, I have, I think, found the exe. file and deleted but it returns in the same place on boot up.

Still need help, please.

4ukinell, if you think that you have found the .exe file causing the problem, you could first try a Google search and see what turns up, you may find some specific method to remove the file, else.....as it comes back when you re-boot, I suspect that that you will need to disable the system restore, delete the rouge file and then re-boot. After the file is confirmed deleted you can then enable system restore and hopefully everything will be OK.
I would also strongly consider installing both of the anti spyware products mentioned before.
Let us know how you get on.

LB2

Have you tried switching it on........?

My initial thoughts are that it`s a popup alerting you to a fictitious virus. The .exe file you have found may be totally unrelated to the popup but nonetheless can still easily be spyware or virus as it reappears.

Removing them is not easy even with tools provided on the internet and some cannot be removed with the tools because they rename themselves by fooling removal software and even take over system files.

Stopping the system restore service and restarting it has nothing to do with it - not sure what good it does. If you specify the name of the exe file in question you might be able to receive more help.

This item was edited on Monday, 19th December 2005, 21:00

Mike,
have seen a few recommendations where system restore was disabled as part of spyware removal, I assumed the spyware buried itself in there somewhere to enable it to recover after deletion, another urban myth I suppose :/ .
Yes, I think naming the .exe would be helpful.

LB2

Have you tried switching it on........?

LB2 I may have got it wrong. It seemed at first that you suggested disabling System Restore before deleting the file and I was thinking how System Restore has anything to do with deleting a file.

However, you may have been inferring something else - ie. disable system restore before running the spyware removal tool, which is different. In that case, disabling System Restore is a good idea because some spyware lodge themselves in SR and disabling it enables the tools access to the SR directory (when enabled, the SR directory is protected). My apologies if I misunderstood you but it did sound like Disable SR before deleting a file.

Sorted, AVG found it and got rid of it.

Thanks for your help.

It was "Trojan Horse Generic. KYE" according to AVG.

Thanks again

Well done 4uknell, glad you nailed the problem.

Mike,
sometimes when I read back a post, I think, "I know what I meant when I typed it......or do I?" :) .

LB2

Have you tried switching it on........?