Just another COMPUTER gripe thread.

**jcole** · April-24-09, 11:04 AM

If you still want to do a reformat and want to save emails and pictures, just burn what you want to keep to a DVD/CD and then do your reformat/reinstall. Make sure that you install a virus scanner, malware scanner and firewall and ALL of the updates. After all that's done, begin copying all of your data on the DVD back, and the malware prgs should catch any virii, etc as you copy.

**jfree** · April-24-09, 11:37 AM

Avast is another really good free a/v product. I've seen serious conflicts on machines that try to have Symantec and AVG trying to co-exist.

**Bigb23** · April-24-09, 11:50 AM

Jcole -

What I can't figure out is, how can a virus prevent my computer from recognizing any thumb drives on any of the USB's ? And I also tried a defrag and got an error message saying it won't start. I need my personal confuser for job searching, and the redirects are really pissing me off. I'll download ad aware tonight and see what happens.

**jcole** · April-24-09, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Bigb23

Jcole -

What I can't figure out is, how can a virus prevent my computer from recognizing any thumb drives on any of the USB's ? And I also tried a defrag and got an error message saying it won't start. I need my personal confuser for job searching, and the redirects are really pissing me off. I'll download ad aware tonight and see what happens.

A lot of the newer malware is coded to not allow you any way to get rid of it. In other words, it prevents the use of thumb drives that might have a new virus program on them, or it won't let you go to a website for malware software.

**Islandman** · April-24-09, 12:01 PM

Originally Posted by jcole

A lot of the newer malware is coded to not allow you any way to get rid of it. In other words, it prevents the use of thumb drives that might have a new virus program on them, or it won't let you go to a website for malware software.

Second. They also "act" like they are doing a scan of your computer when they are doing nothing. Even doing an online scan will not work at this point. Definitely wipe time.

**jcole** · April-24-09, 12:18 PM

Originally Posted by Islandman

Second. They also "act" like they are doing a scan of your computer when they are doing nothing. Even doing an online scan will not work at this point. Definitely wipe time.

I definitely agree.
Even my suggestion of burning your data to DVD may not fly. It depends on the virus. Or trojan, or whatever the case may be.

**Flanders** · April-24-09, 01:02 PM

Too bad that you probably don't know how to use a live Linux CD/DVD with Clam AV, it will scan and remove viruses from a Windows OS while it is not running, but the partition where the OS is located "C" in windows but 1 in Linux, has to be mounted first, and the Clam AV has to be updated from its website.

**Flanders** · April-24-09, 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by Bigb23

Jcole -

What I can't figure out is, how can a virus prevent my computer from recognizing any thumb drives on any of the USB's ? And I also tried a defrag and got an error message saying it won't start. I need my personal confuser for job searching, and the redirects are really pissing me off. I'll download ad aware tonight and see what happens.

A defrag won't help you, but I always defrag Windows in safe mode the less apps running while defragging, the better, IMO.

ccbatson · April-24-09, 03:30 PM

All of the wasted time dealing with this PC nonsense easily makes up for the cost differential to Mac...even at 5 dollars an hour, you end up ahead.

**jcole** · April-24-09, 03:59 PM

Originally Posted by ccbatson

All of the wasted time dealing with this PC nonsense easily makes up for the cost differential to Mac...even at 5 dollars an hour, you end up ahead.

Did you miss this link by d.mcc in your haste to make it to your 20 post quota today?
Macs no longer immune to viruses, experts say

Apple's growing market share, new chips said making it more of a target

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12537279/

**Flanders** · April-24-09, 04:07 PM

Originally Posted by ccbatson

All of the wasted time dealing with this PC nonsense easily makes up for the cost differential to Mac...even at 5 dollars an hour, you end up ahead.

$5.00 an hour?

I've never paid one red cent for tech support, what I needed to find out was easily discovered in books, trial and error, or by browsing for it online, you can't learn by paying for someone else to fix computer problems.

Just this am, my free AVG software program displayed an error message when checking for updates, turns out that the server mirror that it contacts is down. I could not change the fixed web address within the free version of the software, so I checked online to see if anyone had the same problem, and of course there were several links regarding it, I deleted two files within the application, and AVG now downloads updates automatically once again with no problems..

**Bigb23** · April-24-09, 09:16 PM

The line by line edit can throw me. What I need is a fix that does'nt need a UNIX edit.

**Mama Jackson** · April-24-09, 10:41 PM

Seriously BigB, you need to check out bleepingcomputer.com. I had the Vondue virus and was able to remove it following their program suggestions [[free) and their advise. The machine does the work cleaning itself up!

**Jimaz** · April-25-09, 01:55 PM

This is a long shot but regarding the "redirects," you might want to check your C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. file. Normally the only non-comment line in that file is

Code:

127.0.0.1       localhost

Any other addresses in there would likely be the cause of the redirects. That file should normally be left read-only [[right-click/properties/attributes) since it's a target of hijackers.

**old guy** · April-25-09, 03:13 PM

I'm a straight up Mac user. In our office we run 3 - 5 Macs all day long and have for a little over 7 years. The only virus we've ever had to deal with was one that disabled our e-mail. But that doesn't mean that you never have problems with Macs. I know more than a few people that get reasonably annoyed with the mac ads. I also think that it's pretty naive to think that someone isn't going to come up with a nasty virus for macs too. We're very careful about what gets downloaded here and we're always waiting for that bad day.
It's like the old joke of saying, Nobody could do that!, if you wanted to get somebody to do something. I hate hearing anyone touting how safe macs are, because I know that it just drives more and more meatheads to find a way to do it. I love the mac, but they aren't perfect, although for what they cost, they should be.

ccbatson · April-25-09, 10:36 PM

That is a very low ball estimate of the per hour amount for the frustrated computer user, not tech support.

**jiminnm** · April-25-09, 11:21 PM

This is a good site for getting rid of things that other AV don't get.
http://www.malwarebytes.org

I also second http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ as a good place to get help from others on removing your problem.

**Pam** · April-26-09, 07:27 AM

This is a good site for getting rid of things that other AV don't get.
http://www.malwarebytes.org

I just used them last night for something that slipped through my Macafee anti-virus/anti-spyware. I used the free trial download and it seems to have worked.

**Lowell** · April-26-09, 09:19 AM

Originally Posted by jiminnm

This is a good site for getting rid of things that other AV don't get.
http://www.malwarebytes.org

I also second http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ as a good place to get help from others on removing your problem.

My gurus, including those [rackAid.com] who watch over, update, patch and back up my dedicated rack server on which this discussion takes place, have advised running the free version of malwarebytes.

ccbatson · April-26-09, 08:14 PM

All of this stuff is a non issue in the Mac universe.

**Flanders** · April-26-09, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by ccbatson

All of this stuff is a non issue in the Mac universe.

Only because Windows is far more widely used, and has nothing to do with how much better and secure it is. The most secure OS is a Unix distro named OpenBSD. If Mac was as popular as Windows has been, it would be targeted and be the most vulnerable. Crackers would then create viruses, worms and trojans for Mac rather than Windows. Most servers are Apache which uses the Linux kernel.

ccbatson · April-26-09, 08:33 PM

Maybe so...but possibly not the case at all. It doesn't really matter to the individual user why one is a disaster and the other isn't however.

**Pam** · April-27-09, 06:24 AM

I just used them last night for something that slipped through my Macafee anti-virus/anti-spyware. I used the free trial download and it seems to have worked

I spoke too soon. The problem came back [[fake security warnings) so I am running the Malwarebytes again. How many times do I need to do it? I deleted everything they said to delete the first time.

**Pam** · April-27-09, 09:03 AM

Make sure you are doing your Windows and other software updates as well as your virus checks

I do.

Has anyone else had this malware that seems to mutate and come back? Will the malwarebytes get rid of it eventually, or do I have to do something else?