Fucking internet

[palsgraf_polka]

I got hit with a massive computer virus this morning on reboot of my computer, and my computer is fuxored.

And you know, I'm so safe and I'm so good about not going to any websites that are questionable and I don't do anything weird on my computer at all. I am so pissed that this happened, and apparently, after doing research, this is a nasty trojan that slips in under ALL the antivirus/antispyware programs and hits you. You can pay a $70 ransom to get it to go away, or you can do battle like a true IT Warlord.

Well, I'm not fucking paying. And the worst part is that I was going to back up my hard drive tonight and burn my Windows XP disc tonight in preparation for my reformat on Friday, but now I have 45 pages of instructions on how to get rid of this thing and everything on my computer could be infected with this shit. I don't even know if I want to use the Windows XP file I got that I needed to burn to disc.

For you out there that are more tech savvy then I am, if I go through all the manual removal rigmarole to get rid of this piece of shit trojan, can I go back to using my files as I did? Would you trust the Windows XP ISO I have on my hard drive or should I go out and buy one to have a fresh disc for the reformat on Friday? Also, I have pretty much everything backed up from a month or so ago on my external drive, which has not been connected to the computer. Should I just say FUCK IT to everything and just reformat my drives without removing this thing, or should I remove it first, then reformat my drives? I don't think I'll lose anything major - any pictures I've posted since I did my big backup a month ago can be recovered from photobucket.

Advice please? I've not really dealt with something like this on my own computer. Travis had a similar virus on his computer but I just reformatted it and it was gone. But I'd kind of like to do one final backup of my documents folder before I reformat. Also, without that Windows XP ISO that's on my hard drive burned to a disc, I can't reformat without going and buying Windows XP again because my disc disappeared.

So, please let me know. Hopefully some of you tech peeps are reading this.

Comments

[wobblerlorri.livejournal.com]

I also have to disagree with the first commenter, AVG isn't great, but Norton and McAfee are absolute bloated crap that will fuck your system up worse than it is.

I wholeheartedly agree. I've been using F-Secure for years, and I absolutely love it. It's cleaned everything I've ever asked it to clean (except that fucking Vundo/Virtumonde excrescence, but then nothing cleans it), and I have Spyhunter 3 for my backup spyware/malware scanner.

Shelby, you always want to have 2 spyware/malware programs, because none of them catch them all. But with two, you're pretty sure to get them all.

[jdack.livejournal.com]

I never heard of F-Secure. I'll look into it.

Agreed re: 2 spyware programs. I used to have to run both spybot s&d and ad-aware at the same time.

[palsgraf-polka.livejournal.com]

That's what I always ran - both SpyBot & AdAware. But my computer has just been getting slower and slower this last year, and I think it's just bogged down with 4 years of crap in the registry, not enoug RAM to handle Firefox and general sluggishness. And of course it is 2 DAYS bfore I'm scheduled to reformat that this happens. Fuckin' A.

[wobblerlorri.livejournal.com]

NO NO NO never Ad-Aware!!! It's just a spyware/malware of it's very own!! Spybot S&D is a good one. The F-Secure suite I run has antispy/malware included, so the SpyHunter 3 is doing a good job side by side.

I let it run every morning when I boot up, and it cleans all the crap out of my browser history nice and neat. I have FS set up to run a full scan every Friday morning at 1 am, and it's generally finished by the time I get up the next morning.

[skywhisperer.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with using 2 AV programs - they all hook the file system, and you can get some really weird interactions. One of the worst computer messes I ever cleaned up without re-installing windows involved _6_ AV programs - and a virus.

I know I'm coming across as a Norton fangirl, but it works. And the performance today is amazing compared to where it was 5 years ago. It really doesn't bog down a machine any more - especially not in comparison to running 2 free AV programs!

[palsgraf-polka.livejournal.com]

I'm having such a big nerd crush on all of you right now. :)

[wobblerlorri.livejournal.com]

Not antiVIRUS, antispyware/malware. Two completely different things. And not free -- you get exactly what you pay for with a free AV or AS/M program. As much as it killed me to do, I actually bought my F-Secure and renew it every year, and I bought SpyHunter as well. My two AS/M progs are the one that comes with the F-Secure Security Suite, and SpyHunter.

No, you don't want to run two different AV programs, because yeah, they don't play well together. This is mostly because they both like to TSR themselves, and they don't like someone else running in their space.

But two spyware scanners work fine, as long as you only have ONE of them TSR'ing. You let one of them sit around on the box and scan all the incoming traffic and email, run a formal scan with it whenever you like, as often as you like, then you nuke that one and fire up the other one, and run a formal scan with it.