Interesting problem with my parents' computer

aliEnRIK

Let him know that if its the AVG suite with the firewall, the firewall is less safe than using windows built in one

easyhost

vyle wrote: »

I'm going to my parents' today, so I'll try all these things out. Stupidly my dad paid for AVG, despite the fact that it kept failing to load properly and dropping updates BEFORE he paid for it, and he's reluctant to change. I have no idea why he paid for it in the first place tbh.

I'll see if i can convince them to get something more comprehensive though. I use avast, with spybot for backup and I've not had a virus in a good five years or so.

i have used Kaspersky Internet Security for the last 10 yrs and had no problems or viruses
http://www.software4students.co.uk its cheaper that buying direct

vyle

Last night I went to my parents with the file association patches on an SD card and ran them, and none of them fixed the problem. In fact I couldn't unzip one of them because the computer couldn't find winrar. Oddly this is how I found my fix.

I print-screened the error message saying winrar didn't exist, on top of a window clearly showing that the program was where it should be. I could open it directly.

However, I couldn't open paint to save the screen grab, nor could I run it, even though, again, it was where windows said it WASN'T.

Safe in the knowledge that the programs were there, i searched for the system restore program and found it, and tried running it. Again, it said it didn't exist, but as I could access it from the other user area, I knew it WAS there somehow. So I right-clicked the .exe and chose "run as administrator" and BOOM it worked. I restored the PC to how it was 3 weeks ago, disconnected it from the internet while I ran Avast, killed some viruses, rebooted and it's all good.

There was a virus lurking in a flash installer.

So if anybody has similar problems, simply run the program you need from its location as administrator. Easy.

RussJK

You didn't unzip them from a working computer first?? Didn't you say you run a computer shop or something?

Good to know the 'run as admin' option works, and that you managed to fix it anyway!

vyle

I don't run a computer shop, lol. I work in sales and also deal with some aftersales stuff.

I knew that if I needed to I could use their laptop or the functioning admin user area, but didn't really think at the time, because I was very busy with other stuff so just downloaded and dragged-dropped onto my card.

RussJK

Haha fair enough Well if you have a customer complaining of it again, you'll know two ways to fix it now.

Similarly, if they find all their files appear to have disappeared particularly after an infection, then the files are just set to hidden. Surprisingly this confounds even a lot of the posters here.

vyle

The first thing I do whenever I get my hands on a computer is to ensure it shows hidden files, and displays file extensions.

The "hide file extensions for known file types" 'feature' is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. I wonder how many people have opened a poorly disguised virus called something like 'holiday photo.exe' because they didn't know it wasn't a jpg due to the hidden extension.