Virus Help?

Help a techie girl out?

So the family's desktop computer suposedly has some kind of virus thingy that showed up after the comp last updated itself. The update included an update for IE 7 (which no one uses anyway, but the Verizon browser is linked to it for our regular internet). Things just started getting buggy after that; things that ran on Java were being blocked (for example, games on Pogo.com would have white windows when the games were trying to load), the pop-up blocker wouldn't work even though it was enabled, and windows pop up while browsing that ask something along the lines of "are you SURE you want to go here?".

So we've tried messing with what we had for antivirus software. Mcaffee did squat. Found nothing. Would scan for two hours, rescan, and find nothing.

We then installed Verizon Online Protection Suite. Found four viruses McAffee didn't find, but only quarantined them. Couldn't clean them. And the Win32 program that allows firewalls to be installed was being blocked, so the Verizon Firewall wouldn't finish installing.

We tried McAffee again, and let it scan overnight. It still found nothing. Ran the Verizon scan next, now there are EIGHT viruses. Grr.

Uninstall, reinstall Verizon to try to get the firewall to work. No dice.

This afternoon I managed to get the firewall installed and it worked for a while, but as soon as I took it on to Pogo.com to try it, pop-ups showed up like mad. Pogo wasn't blocked anymore; games worked fine.

Last thing I want to do right now is have to wipe the drive clean. I hope I've been on the right track thus far.

Any other suggestions?

 

Ok, first off don't trust McAfeeee for anything important.

The problem may just be windows. It happened to me. If you have XP and installed SP3 that may be causing programs to be blocked and as a result windows will see imaginary viruses as a cause of the problem.

You soul take the computer somewhere to be looked at, see what can be done. and if you want a new anti-virus, get Avast, it's been working for me.

 

Or AVG, I believe they have free versions of it online if you want. I think AVG is pretty good, haven't had a bad virus yet!

 

My mom has that, it won't do anything about the viruses :/

 

Oh, I see...
Is it the latest version, with the latest updates and everything?

 

What they neglected to tell me when I first started looking at the thing was that it started after the computer's most recent update, and that windows would pop up advertising something like Antivirus2009 or something. It's been on the news all over the place because of what the security leak does to the computer it infects.

What I've managed to do since my last post was another scan (where it founs yet another 3 viruses), reinstalled the Verizon Security Suite, and blocked IE 7 on the firewall. That seems to have worked so far.

 

Best thing to do when your computer has a virus it to keep it off and not connected to the internet.

yeah windows will tell you to get AntiSpywear2009, but it's $50. though it will scan for free :\

This happened to me. Windows saw 25 major threats, only 3 or so were real and not major >.> just get a computer person to look at it.

 

NIS, or Norton Internet Security. Very reliable and it doesn't take long to scan. I use it al the time and my computer runs fine. If not the, then Ad-Aware-SE Personal. That is the virtual equivalent, but it will check for updates that could be made on the virus scanning system.

 

Thanks for all those links Toshi. We'll see what that does.

I've figured out the name of the pesky thing: it's called the Monder Trojan virus. Basically what it does is it attaches to the explorer.exe and win32.exe files. What it's been doing now is unblocking and allowing IE 7 to run even though we've firewalled it and any programs linked to it.