adware punisher

[Jack Black]

Has anyone else been stung by this worm??, Virus?? spyware??

It has painted my Desktop yellow and placed an ad there stating that
my machine is infected with spyware. This ad offers 2 options, either
download or buy now!

Does anyone either know how to eliminate this infestation or can
suggest where I can go for help?

Please note tha AVG, spybot and ad-aware (all recently updated) have
had no impacton on this thing.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Has anyone else been stung by this worm??, Virus?? spyware??

It has painted my Desktop yellow and placed an ad there stating that
my machine is infected with spyware. This ad offers 2 options, either
download or buy now!

Does anyone either know how to eliminate this infestation or can
suggest where I can go for help?

Please note tha AVG, spybot and ad-aware (all recently updated) have
had no impacton on this thing.

It appears to ride on the reputation of "AdAware", the spyware
killer. I got rid of one this morning, by killing it with msconfig.
Click Start / Run / msconfig.exe {OK}, click the Startup tab,
untick the box that refers to it and reboot the system.

 

[Malke]

Has anyone else been stung by this worm??, Virus?? spyware??

It has painted my Desktop yellow and placed an ad there stating that
my machine is infected with spyware. This ad offers 2 options, either
download or buy now!

Does anyone either know how to eliminate this infestation or can
suggest where I can go for help?

Please note tha AVG, spybot and ad-aware (all recently updated) have
had no impacton on this thing.

Run the utilities here:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Smitfraud_Trojan

Then check the steps for malware removal here:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

I know you said you've run the usual programs, but I don't know if you
did any preliminary cleanup work and/or you ran the programs in Safe
Mode.

After you've gone through the necessary removal steps, if you are still
having problems with the Desktop, post back.

Malke

 

[Jack Black]

Many thanks for your reply and all the relevant links.

10 days ago my computer crashed when I was foolishly attempting a live
BIOS session from the Motherboard manufacturer. I couldn't even start
WidowsXP so I took it back to the shop where I bought it and had
Windows and the relevant drivers re installed.

Question #1

If I take it back again and have the C Drive reformatted will this
definitly eliminate this, ( possibly Smitfraud/Spyaxe ) junk, or can
it possibly hide somewhere in my Data which is held on other Drives
or in the Bios itself?
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I am experiencing some strange effects such as difficulty in
installing new programs, with the warning of insufficient memory, when
I just increased RAM from 512 MB to 1.5 GB

I have found that it takes 10-20 seconds just to open a Desktop folder
or the Control Panel and yet I have a fairly fast AMD 3000+++ chip.

Question #2

Is it possible that this Malware is the cause of these problems?? or
have I got 2 problems?? Malware and a bad XP installation?

Thanks again for your kind help

 

[Malke]

Many thanks for your reply and all the relevant links.

10 days ago my computer crashed when I was foolishly attempting a live
BIOS session from the Motherboard manufacturer. I couldn't even start
WidowsXP so I took it back to the shop where I bought it and had
Windows and the relevant drivers re installed.

If I take it back again and have the C Drive reformatted will this
definitly eliminate this, ( possibly Smitfraud/Spyaxe ) junk, or can
it possibly hide somewhere in my Data which is held on other Drives
or in the Bios itself?

Certainly you can have data that is infected with a virus. Scanning with
your current version av using updated definitions should tell you
whether the data is virus-free. Certainly you could have spyware
executables you downloaded - like a screensaver from Freeze.com - that
if you reinstall onto your clean operating system will infect you with
spyware again. Scans of your data drives with Ad-aware and Spybot
should pick up on any suspicious executables - or you could simply make
sure that you don't reinfect yourself by installing anything suspect.

The Smitfraud malware cannot hide in your computer's BIOS.

Malke

 

[Plato]

Has anyone else been stung by this worm??, Virus?? spyware??

Next time choose NOT to install it.