I had two trojan viruses that were quarantined (CD, email, flash)
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I found two trojan viruses, wextract.exe, that were quarantined. I turned off system restore, rebooted to safe mode, rescanned and nothing else was found.
A couple weeks ago the internet explorer icon had a different name below it. I changed it back to "internet explorer." Yesterday, the icon said "k" below it.
I have netzero dialup at the moment, and don't know if that is less secure. I don't understand why anyone would be messing with me as I am not rich. I am currently unemployed and share my home with a relative who is helping me out until I find other work.
Nobody is messing with you specifically. You (or your relative) clicked on something naughty and have infected your system with spyware. A clean install is always best in these cases because once you're infected, there's no way to prove the system is clean. If you want to try cleaning it without reformatting, I suggest the following free programs:
AVG Antivirus
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Ad-Aware 2008
Spybot Search and Destroy
Some of these programs are pretty big downloads for a dialup connection so if you have access to broadband somewhere, I suggest downloading them there and bringing them home on a flash drive.
The probem with spyware is that it advances faster that the good guys can adapt so there's no one program that gets everything. Depending on the speed of your computer and number of files on it, each program can take anywhere from 30-90 minutes to complete a scan.
In the future, make sure Windows is up to date, difficult on a dialup connection, but it has to be done and use a non-Microsoft web browser such as Mozilla Firefox.
You also need to be absolutely sure your virus scan is always on and updated daily. Trojan virus suggests one kind of problem that can be solved. Just remove the trojans and go on. Why would you do a clean install?
So how do you guarantee a system is clean once its been infected?
Once it's clean, delete the Quarantine folder and scan the entire hard disk again. When the scan comes up empty, you're done. Remember, the virus scan you're using recognized the problem and dealt with it the first time around. Why would it not find it the second?
Clean install? What?? I do this for a living and never do a clean install. It simply isn't necessary.
On the other hand with a dial up connection it's probably faster!
Do remember to back up things you need. Documents email, etc.
I do too. I only install Windows on a blank hard disk to create an image for use in cloning onto identical machines. Certainly not necessary to swat a bug.
Once it's clean, delete the Quarantine folder and scan the entire hard disk again. When the scan comes up empty, you're done. Remember, the virus scan you're using recognized the problem and dealt with it the first time around. Why would it not find it the second?
And what about the ones it doesn't know about? I deal with malware all the time too and there's nothing more fun than running three different scanners against it, booting to a CD and removing a few more manually, then launching Firefox after the system is "clean" and having it it redirect every third click to some malicious search page.
Nobody is messing with you specifically. You (or your relative) clicked on something naughty and have infected your system with spyware. A clean install is always best in these cases because once you're infected, there's no way to prove the system is clean. If you want to try cleaning it without reformatting, I suggest the following free programs:
AVG Antivirus
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Ad-Aware 2008
Spybot Search and Destroy
Some of these programs are pretty big downloads for a dialup connection so if you have access to broadband somewhere, I suggest downloading them there and bringing them home on a flash drive.
The probem with spyware is that it advances faster that the good guys can adapt so there's no one program that gets everything. Depending on the speed of your computer and number of files on it, each program can take anywhere from 30-90 minutes to complete a scan.
In the future, make sure Windows is up to date, difficult on a dialup connection, but it has to be done and use a non-Microsoft web browser such as Mozilla Firefox.
Is google chrome safer than explorer?
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