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Post by Shrouded Wolf on Dec 11, 2009 1:38:30 GMT -5
O...k... If this isn't ironic, I don't know what is...
Through a security hole in skype, a virus snuck onto my computer, and quite ironically enough infected my antivirus and my firewall without leaving a trace or showing any signs. The only reason why I know anything? Windows defender (of all things) detected a minor part of the virus.
Anyway. Thanks to windows defender, a portable (and outdated -.-')ad-aware app, and the diagnostic tool in my firewall, I was able to get the antivirus in my firewall working again, and that got rid of most of the infection, and now my firewall is fully functional (at least as far as ad-aware portable and my firewall's AV scanners are concerned).
The problem lies in the fact that the virus is stopping me from doing anything to my antivirus. However, since my antivirus is infected, I can't do anything to the virus either.
My question is... What now? Any ideas on what I can do? I'd go ahead and nuke the drive like I was planning to a couple of weeks ago and reinstall everything, but... I've got 9 and a half gigs of stuff on there that I can't trash. At the same time, I'm afraid to connect my iPod (beause that's the only place where I have all my music in one place) or my external (a bunch of stuff that's only there and nowhere else)...
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Post by Tout-Perd on Dec 11, 2009 2:53:31 GMT -5
Personally, I'd get a 10 Gig flash drive, use it to back up the stuff, and if it gets infected, just put the stuff bad onto the computer before wiping it and format the hell out of the flash drive.
If the virus is bad enough to infect flash drives, well, that's just not good. Then, you need to get creative, such as uploading files to the internet (Videos to Youtube, music to some download storage site, images to Photobucket), and then just annihilate whatever still isn't salvagable.
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Post by ch00beh on Dec 11, 2009 11:38:43 GMT -5
1) Cut a hole in the box Restart computer in safe mode 2) Uninstall anti-virus 3) Install a different one. I suggest Avast! Antivirus. It's what I use, and it's pretty good about alerting me when sites try to get crap onto my computer. And it's free. 4) Try scanning with that. 5) I like to live on the edge, so I would probably just connect my external to the computer. But if you are feeling really paranoid, you could take all the important files, put them in zip/rar archive, and copy that into the drive. Since it's archived, when you download it again, it won't auto-execute, so you can perform a scan on it before taking everything out. 6) Reformat drive.
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Post by hermes on Dec 13, 2009 23:30:43 GMT -5
Muwahahaha, I've infected you all with Avast! Anti-virus.
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Post by Ninety on Dec 16, 2009 22:04:45 GMT -5
A couple of weeks ago I updated AVG to the 9.0 version then shut it down. Guess what never booted back up again? I couldn't boot into safe mode and could only get BIOS to come up. Took it to a PC repair shop that said it was overheating like crazy for some reason and my memory and CPU was shot and that they would have to be replaced before he could even figure out why it was hot enough to fry eggs on. He then said it's probably not even worth it and I should just get a new computer.
I did. As a lifelong PC user, I'm almost ashamed to say that I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro.
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Post by ch00beh on Dec 17, 2009 1:05:41 GMT -5
I'm gonna be buying new parts after Christmas. Want me to send you my old processor and RAM and motherboard? They're like 98159875 years old.
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Post by Ninety on Dec 17, 2009 1:15:48 GMT -5
Nah, it's 'kay. I'm just going to sell the laptop to the PC shop now that I've got a new one.
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