PC Help Needed

chris69

Hi not sure if anyone can help but any ideas would be welcome. My pc was running ok last week but my son was on it and although he says he couldnt get on the sites he wanted to my pc has got a problem. It says the anti virus is not active but i cant get to any home page or any site to install or reinstall an antivirus. The egg timer is continually flashing on and off all the time. When i try to restore it to an earlier date it wont go to the restore calander so i am not sure what to try next. Be grateful of any help I have ran search and destroy and that seemed ok. Thanks in advance

Strider590

http://www.kaspersky.co.uk/virusscanner

http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/home.asp

GKWelding

Sounds like this could be malware rather than adware, which S&D wouldn't pick up. If your AV is disbaled then this is most likely the cause.

What you need to do is find another Pc that is infection free and has an internet connection, then go to either of the web pages listed below to download and burn a rescue disk from one of the 4 main anti-virus software manufactuers. Yiou will then need to follow the rest of the instructions to scan and clean your PC. You need to append http and the www[dot] to the front of the links as because I'm a new user it wont let me post links yet...

raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/07/26/free-f-secure-rescue-cd-300-to-clean-virus-from-unbootable-windows/
raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/06/28/free-avira-antivir-rescue-system-cd-to-clean-unremovable-virus/
raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/06/16/kaspersky-offers-free-rescue-disk-to-clean-virus-without-booting-in-windows/
raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/07/17/bitdefender-offers-free-rescue-cd-with-ability-to-auto-update-virus-definition/

Make sure any USB drives (or other removable drives you use) are also connected to the Pc as these rescue CD's also scan them and if this is malware then chances are it's replicated to a USB drive so it can reinfect next time you plug it in.

Good luck.

GKWelding

Strider590's suggestion would usually work for a PC that has retained it's internet access, but seeing as your hasn't you need to find a PC with access and a CD burner and do the method I suggested. Online virus scanners are useless if you can't get online.

Strider590

OP didn't mention they couldn't get to any site?

Oh well...... in that case, try to find this file

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Right click on the "hosts" file and select properties, deselect "read only"

Open the file with notepad and check that the only entry without a # before it is "127.0.0.1 Local Host"
Delete any other entries and save the file.

If it's a browser hijack, this file is normally the first thing that gets messed with.