Help for a nasty virus

[Phishnoob]

If any IT pros are out there we are stuck with something that pops up that says that your web page is unavailable and you have to click yes on a selection bar. It grays out all of your favorites.

The other problem is that there is a bar that will not go away that says Web Search and it really is bad.

I loaded the Pest Patrol update and scanned for viruses and these are not detected.

Is there a minimum size or bag limit on hackers or the guys that do this crap?

[Melissa]

Have you run a scan disk? It may not be a virus. Make sure you spin around three times on one foot, then touch your elbow to your middle toe before the scan disk completes. This works for me.


Melissa

[kwjones]

Sounds like a denial of service attack. I've had to fix my cousin's computer twice because his kids kept downloading stuff from Kazaa. Whenever he turned the PC on, before he connected to the internet, an IE page would open itself over 50 times saying that the website was unavailable/offline. I finally traced it to an IP address and did a google search for the IP address...that's how I found out it was a denial of service attack.

Have you gone to the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel to see if there's anything there that you can uninstall that shouldn't be there?

Last ditch effort...CAN DAMAGE YOUR PC...DO NOT ATTEMPT UNLESS YOU ARE CONFIDENT OF WHAT EVERYTHING IS...from the windows run command type "regedit" and go into the registry. Expand HKey_Local_Machine, then expand Software. Go through the software and see if there's anything that seems out of place and delete it. If you're NOT sure what it is you're looking at, DON'T delete it. IF you DELETE something that shouldn't be deleted, you'll have to re-install the OS which can wipe out all the data on your hard drive.

And if you're like me, and you're tired of your computer being slow...make sure you have a system restore CD (Operating software/applications/driver software that came with your PC), back up the files you want to keep, reformat the hard drive and re-install what you want. It's like having a brand new PC all over again...takes forever to re-install everything unless you have Norton Ghost.

Kevin

[Phishnoob]

Thanks for the advice. I think I might just wipe this out, reload all the XP Pro Windows and Office and AutoCad and the other stuff I use and start over. I am going to save all the stuff on the computer though and take a peek at the registry after that.

All we try and do at work is put lifesaving medical equipment in the hands of folks that can save 600,000 lives that would otherwise pass on due to cardiac arrest and we are paralyzed by these people that hijack or trojan all this junk. Saves have been made by teenagers, on airplanes, in casinos and lately in the home with our equipment or that of the noble competition. This person that might die could be your parent or your grandparent, or a good samaritan. Sorry to vent...off my stumpbox

[rtgordon]

did you try any spyware removal apps? spybot s&d? adaware?

the last problem i had was belgiandip... it wasn't detectible. You might try to google search with exactly what is happening or use google with anything that seems out of the ordinary. I found it because right before it redirected to the site, it went to the belgiandip server (and i saw this in the title bar (the blue bar at the top) for a split second). I googled what it said in the title bar and found the problem/remedy.

hth

[Jeremiah]

Does the search bay say "MyWebSearch" in a blue color? I have gotten this too and did some things that you described. I got it from my kids installing kazzaa. Kazzaa installs like 6 other programs on install but only uninstalls 2 of them when you uninstall it. That probably why you aren't seeing it as a virus, cause it isn't. Another thing that would help is when you get the browser that has the web search bar on it, hit the "Print Screen" key on the upper right of your keyboard. This will copy a bitmap of your screen onto the clipboard. Then just open up paint or photoshop or whatever and paste it in. Then we can see what it looks like. Another thing you could do it to open the task manager and click on the process's tab, and also copy paste screenshot. You will be able to find the problem in there without haveing to open the registry. It will either be a .dll file or an .exe file.

HTH,
Jeremiah