• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Mother caught a virus.

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

PWatterson

Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2005
Location
Virginia
She opened up an attachment from her daughter and everything has crapped itself. Nothing opens and I keep getting not responding messages left and right. I cannot run AVG, so what can I do short of a re-install? Should I create those rescue disk things on another computer?

Edit: Everything looks like its spelled correctly when you are tired. ;)
 
Last edited:
Can you put the drive in another PC with an up to date virus scanner and then scan the drive?
 
David said:
Can you put the drive in another PC with an up to date virus scanner and then scan the drive?

Sure, I could do that, but would I run the risk of it getting on my hard drives?
 
PWatterson said:
Sure, I could do that, but would I run the risk of it getting on my hard drives?

Most things need something to open a folder/ run some app that the thing is tied too. There is anti virus programs that you can use in dos, might be the best idea . Takes sometime, but nomrlay works
 
Velocity said:
Why not format the drive because it may not run the same anyway and reinstall the OS and place a decent antivirus in that badboy?

Anybody have a suggestion for a better antivirus than AVG? Avast?
 
If you can boot into safe mode with networking, download some trials of anti-adware/spyware programs like spysweeper and ewido as well as free stuff like ad-aware se personal. Update them in normal mode (if you can). Turn off system restore. Then run msconfig. Boot.INI > safemode with networking. Services > hide all ms services > disiable all. Startup > disable all. Restart. ( if that's not possible, there's always good'ole F8 at boot) Run 2 scans of each to double check. When your're clean or you get stuck, uninstal that crap and do the same with virus protection. Install the trials/free versions, update if possible, and run each 2 times. It's time consuming, but easy. If it sounds like too much work, just wipe the drive and reinstall.
 
Well, something interesting happened. I was bored and I tried things once more. I got AVG to run and scan the entire hard drive. It found nothing. Could this not be a virus or is it somehow not showing up? Most programs will still not open. I am half tempted to reformat the thing. I did it a month ago, so nothing would be lost really.
 
you could hook the drive up to a linux box (or bsd or mac or whatever) and scan it from within linux, that way there is no need to worry about catching the virus and it is much more likely to find a virus when the volume is not being used by windows.

edit:

you could also burn a linux live cd and do a scan from that, but you have to make sure that particular live distro has a virus scaner.
 
OSGentoo said:
you could hook the drive up to a linux box (or bsd or mac or whatever) and scan it from within linux, that way there is no need to worry about catching the virus and it is much more likely to find a virus when the volume is not being used by windows.

edit:

you could also burn a linux live cd and do a scan from that, but you have to make sure that particular live distro has a virus scaner.

But a virus scanner for Linux would only search for Linux based viruses.
 
PWatterson said:
Well, something interesting happened. I was bored and I tried things once more. I got AVG to run and scan the entire hard drive. It found nothing. Could this not be a virus or is it somehow not showing up? Most programs will still not open. I am half tempted to reformat the thing. I did it a month ago, so nothing would be lost really.

A few thoughts.

1. The virus may have managed to hide itself from the installed AV program. Run an online scan like housecall.trendmicro.com or kaspersky to search out the virus. I like to run them at the same time if the hardware is reasonably fast.

2. Load up ccleaner and clean the system, in safe mode if necessary.

3. If nothing is found, then use a system restore point to reset the machine back in time to the period when it worked properly.
 
Use a boot disk with virus scanner like bartpe, or a linux boot with virus scanner. Or even www.ultimatebootcd.com

Her daughter most likely has the same virus. She may have sent it to everyone in her adress book so she needs to send an email to everyone letting them know she was infected.

Good luck with the removal.
 
MrGreen said:
But a virus scanner for Linux would only search for Linux based viruses.

and what linux viruses would it scan for? there are approximately 40 known viruses that effect linux and the most of them are old and don't even work with newer versions.

linux virus scanners are generally used to secure networks with windows machines and hence, any virus scanner for linux will scan for windows viruses.
 
corpsejockey said:
Have you tested the HDD for errors?

No, I have not. That could be the cause, as the hard drive is old and was purchased off these forums. If I still get errors once I am convinced the virus is gone, then I think that would be the case.

I also forgot to mention it, but I keep getting Windows errors that say something like "The instruction at "0x000000000" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read". Click OK to terminate program."

I thought it was the RAM at first, so I relaxed the timings, but that did not help. The entire machine is at stock speeds.

Umm, I guess I will get into safe mode and try to load CCleaner off my flash drive and if I can open IE from there, I will do one of those online virus scans. If that does not fix it, then perhaps one of those boot disks and system restore.

My mom is going to see her daughter (my half sister) in a couple of days, so I will tell my mom to talk to her about it. Thanks guys and if that memory things means anything in particular, it would be great to know. Google did not help me out much.
 
Back