one more tech support question...

[Matthew Bryson]

Some of you might have noticed that I've had a lot of questions about trouble shooting virus problems on a PC lately. I've made good progress (I'm posting from said computer for the first time right now) I've gotten rid of several viruses so far. I've enabled the XP firewall, got Norton AV registered and installed and set it up to do everything automaticly, I've got all of my critical updates for windows installed, I've done a live update of the NAV and then a system scan - ..but I've still got one problem. I've got one last virus that Norton can not fix, quarenteen or delete. The virus name is w32(dot)spybot(dot)worm . I'm pretty sure that this is a "spyware" virus and would probably cause pop-up's (except I'm not getting them becasue I'm using a pop-up blocker) Of course, even though I'm not seeing any effects, I still want to get rid of this (at least I think I do - right?) How do I do that if Norton isn't working on it? Do I need to download a (free tial version) program like Ad-Aware? Will that get rid of this spybot? Once I do get rid of it, is there anything else I need to do before I run a disc defrag and call this thing a computer? All advice is appreciated.

MB

 

[LiquidMidnight]

Ad-ware will probaly get rid of the virus, but you may also need to flush it out of the registry. There are free downloadable programs on the net that will help you clean your registry.

 

[unharmed]

Symantec have a good Virus Encyclopaedia here.

Lots of stuff about Spybot.

 

[grovest]

Just ask your wife not to click every button captioned 'OK' and I think it's smooth sailing for your computer.

 

[Don W]

If you go to this page on symantec's site
there is a virus definition and intelligent updater available. I would get the intelligent updater, run it, and then run a full hard drive scan. It should find the files and quarantine them so you can delete them.

 

[Davidoc]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

This will, in all likelyhood, fix it. It doesn't require an install or anything fancy either. I notice that most of the spy-removal software almost take over your computer like the spyware itself. This is just a littel application that requires to other files.

 

[Matthew Bryson]

Who-hoo! This computer dummy has ridded this machine of all evil viruses. For now anyway. The only thing that bothers me is that I'm not 100% sure how I got rid of the spybot - but it seems to be gone... I think it's gone because I turned off the restore feature on XP - ran a live update on NAV, didn't get any errors on the install, restarted and turned the system restore back on, ran a system scan and came up with no viruses. None. I didn't dump the regstry (still not sure what that means) ...do I need to do that? ...anyway, I'm declaring victory. The machine isn't running bad and it shows no viruses - I win.

 

[unharmed]

Who-hoo! This computer dummy has ridded this machine of all evil viruses. For now anyway. The only thing that bothers me is that I'm not 100% sure how I got rid of the spybot - but it seems to be gone... I think it's gone because I turned off the restore feature on XP - ran a live update on NAV, didn't get any errors on the install, restarted and turned the system restore back on, ran a system scan and came up with no viruses. None. I didn't dump the regstry (still not sure what that means) ...do I need to do that? ...anyway, I'm declaring victory. The machine isn't running bad and it shows no viruses - I win.

Huzzah!



Good work, Matthew.