My sister or mother

[Shadowknight 54]

So, I came back from my date last night, and I was rather happy (understandably). I watched a bit of T.V. before heading over to the computer. I turned on the monitor and BAM! "File cmd.exe is infected." So, I'm like, freaking a, is that possible? But after I closed that bubble, another came up, telling me chrome.exe and firefox.exe were infected. Things started to get ridiculous when it said that files in system32 were infected, so I pulled up Internet Explorer to see what was going on. It loads, but immediately redirects me to a page about purchasing Antivirus Soft.

So, I finally understood what was going on. I did some digging, and finally find how to remove it.

I booted into safe mode with networking, ran the malwarebytes scan, removed infected items, and restarted, only to be greeted by a barrage of "This file is infected" balloons again. I was starting to get frustrated around 2 in the morning, so I ran a program to kill all the processes associated with Antivirus Soft and ran another full scan. I ended up leaving it running and going to bed.

I woke up this morning and came to check on it. 13 infected items. Much better than the 149 of last night. So, I removed those items and, with much hope in my heart, reboot. Surprise! Infected files! Crap.

So I ended up using Hijack This to find anything that was known to relate to Antivirus Soft and I found one thing. Hopefully that's the last thing.

I'm dreading this, but I'm about to reboot to see if it worked.

EDIT: No such luck. I tried again and found another instance of it, so I think the first Hijack This attempt may not have worked simply because I wasn't exactly clear as to what I needed to do. But I'm trying again.

[atlasmist radiofreak 0]

oops lol good luck

[Shadowknight 54]

Yes! I fixed it.

So, I suppose the good thing to come out of this is that now all my antivirus databases are up to date, and I've had to reinstall AVG.

The bad thing is that Chrome, Opera, and Internet Explorer are all temporarily out of commission because they keep redirecting to a proxy that I can't seem to turn off. Firefox is fine, though. So now, to reinstall my favourite web browser, Chrome.

Viruses are freaking annoying, but I certainly feel accomplished now that I've managed to get rid of such an annoying one.

[Sly 0]

Ew AVG. Install Avast it's much more secure. =D

[Arcane 12]

Wow, glad you got it under control.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

I had something similar. If it's redirecting you automatically, it probably had a hold of your hosts file. When I got it I searched through stuff furiously. Since for some reason, right before I was going to fix it, my stepdad decided that he knows more about computer viruses than the whole collective of the experienced internet that knows the solution, despite believing that having multiple windows open makes you exponentially more susceptible to getting computer viruses, and also that World of Warcraft gives you computer viruses because Blizzard would totally not get sued terribly by its 8-12 million person userbase and would still be caught distributing it if it had viruses, and he believes that we, the teenagers of the house, are responsible for malicious software attacks despite me catching my mom downloading smiley programs from random advertisements, he made it so only administrators can edit system files or something. I never asked him if he did it, but it had to be him 'cause fff why would it randomly do that.

So forever I wondered what to do. I had to edit the hosts file in Notepad then save it without an extension, but I couldn't edit it. So, and this still kinda' makes me lol, I renamed my hosts file to some other name. I still couldn't edit it, but I created a new hosts file and the virus never bothered me again. It was kinda hilarious.

Sahaqiel

[Skippy 82]

I had that one, it's nasty. But, I keep all my important stuff stored on an external hard drive, and redundant internet backup, so I just did a system restore. Easiest way to go about it.

Then I bought a mac.

[Cirt 612]

Then I bought a mac.

Best solution ever. Amen to that.

[なべ 184]

Or, you could just use your computer properly and steer clear of obvious problems.

Shadowknight, par example, didn't cause the virus problems. But he's taking good steps to fix it, rather than complaining about "that durn Windows".

If you are still having problems, Shadowknight, you could PM me your HijackThis log if you like.

[Shadowknight 54]

Thanks, but I have it all under control. I got every trace of the virus removed, and now I'm just dealing with the effects of having my web browsers thoroughly messed with. And I must say, some of the effects are quite strange. For example, all of my StumbleUpon bookmarks folders got moved out of their folder and placed on my desktop. So now I have a ton of folders on my desktop that are categories, like "Arts" and "Mystery Novels."

Other than that oddity, everything is back to normal.

By the way, the automatic redirecting of websites was because the virus was routing my internet through a proxy that would only allow the "Buy Antivirus Soft" page to be shown. I've had to edit the Hosts directory before, so I could've probably fixed it if I'd needed to.

Man, I'm glad I'm competent with computers. This could've been so much worse if I wasn't. Most of my multimedia is stored on an external hard drive, and my school stuff is on my laptop and flash drive, but there are a few documents I would've been upset to lose if I'd needed to do a system restore.

[Rika Code 29]

O-O

I thought this was about incest

Like your father married your mother had you so your father is also your brother and your mom is also your grandma

[atlasmist radiofreak 0]

EXELLENT (GUITAR PLAYS)

[Sahaqiel 1232]

O-O

I thought this was about incest

I was unsure of what the title had anything to do with this situation when I first read it, but when I first read the title, I imagined my friends making incest jokes about you being uncertain of which one to go with.

[Rika Code 29]

So Zetta confused

[Shadowknight 54]

The title is as it is because it was either my sister or my mom that got the virus. I'm not sure which one, because they just got back from the Ranch, so I haven't had the chance to ask them yet.

The thought of the title being mistaken as incestuous didn't even cross my mind. Hmm.