A Possible Virus

dickg1 · Post by **dickg1** » Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:17 pm

Dusty,
Before you re-install Windows or overwrite try System Restore.
Go to Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools
Run System Restore and attempt to move your system to an earlier date. This may preempt the virus. This scheme has worked for me.
Hope this helps,
Dick

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:30 pm

Shhhhh, Quiet, Don't talk too loud.

But I think I have fixed it!

The advise that I was given here, by all of you, has been very helpful. With your help and the cooperation from my credit card company, who alerted me that the charge was a scam, I might come out of this few days with nothing more that hurt feelings.

All is well that ends well.

kameljoe21 · Post by **kameljoe21** » Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:48 pm

etc92guy wrote:Dusty - Can't say for sure from here, but you may have a
kameljoe - Thats a new one to me. Sounds like you got one that loads in the early stages of the OS load. Another way to handle this is throw the OS into safe mode ( press F8 while booting ). This allows you to look around the system files and do manual eradication if you have the instructions. It will allow you to download MalwareBytes and others, but MalwareBytes won't run in safe mode, so you have to reboot to normal and then battle the windows to get it running. Or say nuts to it and repair or re-install the OS.

that what i did what went to safe mode and battle with it for a while and got it cleaned up

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Wed Feb 10, 2010 3:08 pm

Well, it seems that I do have the virus eradicated but some problems (at least one) have been left behind.

I somehow have disabled my search capability. I can select whatever search engine I might want to use and it appears to be searching but it times out without ever doing a search. The bummer is that I can not even Google for help.

This is one of those things that we tend to take for granted until it doesn't work.

jb41339 · Post by **jb41339** » Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:39 pm

dusty wrote:Well, it seems that I do have the virus eradicated but some problems (at least one) have been left behind.

I somehow have disabled my search capability. I can select whatever search engine I might want to use and it appears to be searching but it times out without ever doing a search. The bummer is that I can not even Google for help.

This is one of those things that we tend to take for granted until it doesn't work.

Dusty,

I battled basically the same problem a few weeks ago. Spent the better part of a whole morning with Dell techs, with no luck. Finally, got to talk to one of the Dell techs that had a very simple solution (as Dick stated above). Go to "system restore" and click on an earlier date (when your computer was working fine). Worked for me. Good Luck.

Jim in Tucson, AZ

GO BUCKEYES!

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:29 am

jb41339 wrote:Dusty,

I battled basically the same problem a few weeks ago. Spent the better part of a whole morning with Dell techs, with no luck. Finally, got to talk to one of the Dell techs that had a very simple solution (as Dick stated above). Go to "system restore" and click on an earlier date (when your computer was working fine). Worked for me. Good Luck.

Jim in Tucson, AZ

GO BUCKEYES!

I've been shot down without knowing it.
My earliest restore point is the very day (within 1 hour) of the time this all began.

Could I have deleted restore points in the frenzy. I have always thought restore points, if created at all, were permanent record until a reformat.

tdubnik · Post by **tdubnik** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:43 am

dusty wrote:I've been shot down without knowing it.
My earliest restore point is the very day (within 1 hour) of the time this all began.

Could I have deleted restore points in the frenzy. I have always thought restore points, if created at all, were permanent record until a reformat.

Some of the nastier viruses actually delete, corrupt or disable system restore. I had that happen on my computer a couple of years ago and though I had lots of restore dates; none of them would work. I actually had to delete all of my restore points, and manually remove the virus using instructions I fould on the internet before I could get my computer back.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:11 am

[quote="tdubnik"]Some of the nastier viruses actually delete, corrupt or disable system restore. I had that happen on my computer a couple of years ago and though I had lots of restore dates]Well that may have happened to mine as well. I have used the restore function before but this time I find no restore points prior to the date of the incident.

I have also got a problem with Task Manager and the Search function.

Taskmgr.exe has been corrupted. I copied it and renamed it taskmgr2.exe and now execute it with the run function. I'll go back and work on proper resolution when everything else is fixed.

I can not execute any sort of web search with Google, yahoo. The connection times out. That is not exactly true. The other search engines like Gala (which I don't care for), Wikipedia, Ask, and Amazon seem to work.

tdubnik · Post by **tdubnik** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:47 am

Dusty,

You might try to install an alternate browser such as Safari, Mozilla, or opera and see if it will do a search.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 8:41 am

Thanks for the feedback but I changed to IE (where this is coming from) and I still cannot search using Google or Yahoo. The other search engines appear to work (I have done only a cursory test).