Have I done everything correctly ??

alison74

When I started up my pc today, it went nuts with virus and trojan alerts etc

I have windows xp, use Avast, Windows Defender, Spybot & Spyware doctor.

When all of these flagged potential harm up, I of course quarantined / got rid of them as they came up (fast and furiously and brought up my email and said I had sent messages to everybody !?)

It all happened so fast, I immediately came offline.

A couple of the viruses were win32/zlob.ans win32/zlob.amv and kept on prompting me to download an anti virus to get rid of them and wanted to direct me to DONT CLICK dsmilead.com/security and noticed that it had installed itself as a programme on my computer and that there was an online alert manager in my add/remove programmes which I don't recognise.

I followed the advice from the sticky and ran CCleaner and superspyware which came up with various things wrong, so I quarantined them and deleted them.

I have now run ccleaner, superspyware, spybot, windows defender, avast in full scan modes and am currently running malwarebyte's anti malware programme (found on a recent thread)

Everything seems to be running fine now (fingers crossed, comp a bit slow, but I assume because I am running a programme)

Have I done everything correctly ? What evils could still be lurking ? Or because I was alerted by windows defender and spyware doctor etc, am I ok ?

It's all very confusing and I did my best to follow the sticky, but now am in limbo as to whether I have done everything.

Thanks in advance

basmic

Run Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware on a full scan, not a quick scan. If you're going to take the trouble of rooting out any problems, you may as well do it properly.

Run ESET's Online Scanner (link) and consider purchasing a decent virus scanner.

Kane99uk

Try booting your PC in Safe mode and running your security programmes again - might find one or two bugs that evaded you the first time.

alison74

Yep, I've found another few, is it worth running the programmes till they've all gone ? Or should I be doing something else

Thanks

Old_Sherlock

alison74 wrote: »

Yep, I've found another few, is it worth running the programmes till they've all gone ? Or should I be doing something else

Thanks

You really should disable system restore if it is enabled , before any of these scans in
XP . The malware could be stored in a directory that is not accessible to your program.

fwor

As the last 2 posts say - there's no point in stopping until you know for sure that you're clean.

One other thing that you need to figure out is how you got the problem in the first place, as your security setup ~appears~ to be quite good. There must be a hole somewhere that needs to be plugged.

Some things to consider:

1. Did anyone install anything on the PC yesterday that you or they were uncertain about?
2. Are you running a firewall such as the built in Windows Firewall?
3. Is your browser set to a low security level? When I used IE I would set the security level to the highest possible to ensure no drive-by downloads, etc. Firefox plus Noscript is a much better way, though.
4. Is your version of XP up to date, with SP3 and all patches installed via Windows Update?

alison74

fwor wrote: »

As the last 2 posts say - there's no point in stopping until you know for sure that you're clean.

One other thing that you need to figure out is how you got the problem in the first place, as your security setup ~appears~ to be quite good. There must be a hole somewhere that needs to be plugged.

Some things to consider:

1. Did anyone install anything on the PC yesterday that you or they were uncertain about?
2. Are you running a firewall such as the built in Windows Firewall?
3. Is your browser set to a low security level? When I used IE I would set the security level to the highest possible to ensure no drive-by downloads, etc. Firefox plus Noscript is a much better way, though.
4. Is your version of XP up to date, with SP3 and all patches installed via Windows Update?

My friend was on it yesterday, and assures me he didn't download anything he shouldn't :rolleyes:

I am using the windows firewall, browser is not set to low level and XP is up to date.

alison74

Old_Sherlock wrote: »

You really should disable system restore if it is enabled , before any of these scans in
XP . The malware could be stored in a directory that is not accessible to your program.

Is it as easy as it looks, just to turn it off by checknig the box ?

Reluctant_spender

Is your computer clean?

I would not clear system restore unless you are.

I see you have Malwarebytes have you run update prior to running it?

alison74

Reluctant_spender wrote: »

Is your computer clean?

I would not clear system restore unless you are.

I see you have Malwarebytes have you run update prior to running it?

Not done anything with system restore yet, I read on another thread here that it doesn't have to be done. Yes, ran updates on all programmes before running them

Reluctant_spender

Are you happy that you are clean now?