Oopsy. Faster Way?

I was meeting with my professor this afternoon to get advising on what courses I should take next semester and other college-y stuff while he worked on his desktop computer (a school-owned Windows XP running monster of a comp). While he was trying to pull my info up online, a message popped up saying his computer was at risk and would he like to scan now?

Little red flags went up in my head and I started to tell him "Don't do it!!!eleventy!" but it was in vain; he had already clicked it and started installing something called Antivirus System PRO. He looks at me and goes "This is good, right?" I simply shook my head at him, knowing that he had just downloaded THE Virus.

So the thing "scans" his comp, and this little bubble keeps popping up near the clock saying "Windows reports that computer is infected. Antivirus software helps to protect your computer against viruses and other security threats. Click here for the scan you computer. You system might be at risk now."

Thing finds 42 "viruses", and he comments "Oh. That's not good." I flatly told him I'm glad he's a Spanish professor and not Computer Science at this point, or this error would be extremely unforgivable (which it already was).

He knows I'm a bit of a technophile and work part-time at the student helpdesk on campus, so he starts asking me how to get rid of this thing as it starts opening several windows linking to wonderful adult sites. Thing is, the only way I know to fix this thing completely is to boot n nuke the thing and reinstall Windows using the disk that came with the computer, but he'd lose everything on that PC in the process, and I would take 2 hours or so just to clean the thing as it is.

My questions is if anyone knows a faster way to rid this comp of this virus? I was going to try putting Avast or Malwarebytes on a flash drive, turning off System Restore on the PC, rebooting in Safe Mode, killing it with the program on the flash drive, and seeing what that does, but I don't think that will be enough for this. But that's how I kill viruses on the students' laptops when they drop them off at my desk, and it's worked, but those were typically low-risk ones as opposed to this beast.

 

When my fuсktard cousin did this to my grandma's computer, we couldn't for the life of us find out how to fix it. We tried the flashdrive method, and the spyware program(which my grandma pays for) was incapable of deleting the file. We tried using something that bypasses system administrations regarding what you can and cant delete(Which was what we assumed the virus was using) and the virus prevented us from opening the program. The computer i am speaking of now blue screens whenever you try to turn it on. it was perfectly good before.

I'm sorry but you're definitely want to nuke it and reinstall windows before it's too late. trust me.

 

This should help you out, follow the instructions carefully and I would recommend printing it to make things easier.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-antivirus-system-pro

Good luck.

 

Thanks, Identity Theft. I'll drag a coworker over with me tomorrow to see what that does, hopefully it'll save his stuff for him. Might not be a fast fix, but a fix nonetheless.

All we got accomplished today was blocking the computer from the campus network, because it would only have been a matter of time before the virus infects other computers on the network (i.e. all of them). My coworker tried every trick up his sleeve and nothing worked. I'm sending him this link so he can give me his opinion on it.

Okay, we did as the site said to do and it seems to be gone as far as we could tell. I'm still going to leave it off of the network for now, just until I'm sure it isn't going to pop back up again. Once the coast is clear I'm setting him up with Firefox, NoScript and FlashBlock because I'm pretty sure it was his buggy Internet Explorer that caused this.