Repairing the damage?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JM
  • Start date Start date
J

JM

I've got an XP computer here that I'm using as a challenge to myself, to see
if I can repair a computer that's been decimated by malware. I'm looking
for input from the good folks here who have been down this road. My last
resort is a reformat, but I'm trying to avoid that for now - mainly to learn
what can and can't be done once a computer has been badly infected.

Other than horrible performance and re-boots, the primary symptom of the
malware was intermittent loss of network connectivity. I did these things:

- AVG Free
- Trend Micro (virus and adware scans)
- Adaware SE
- Spybot S&D
- CW Shredder
- Hijackthis
- XP Winsock Fix

After several passes, the computer started turning up clean. However, the
intermittent internet connection remains. During the internet drop, I can
still ping the outside world, using both dns resolution and ip address, so
the path is there. But neither IE nor FF will get on the internet after it
drops, until I reboot. Then I can use the internet for a few minutes.

Is this a "scar" or is there some malware still working its magic?

thank you,

jm
 
JM said:
I've got an XP computer here that I'm using as a challenge to myself, to see
if I can repair a computer that's been decimated by malware. I'm looking
for input from the good folks here who have been down this road. My last
resort is a reformat, but I'm trying to avoid that for now - mainly to learn
what can and can't be done once a computer has been badly infected.
Click to expand...


One thing you need to know is that even if you can get it to the point
of scanning clean, you still can't trust that machine ever again,
and really need to fdisk, repartition, reformat, and reinstall to get
back to a known state.
After several passes, the computer started turning up clean. However, the
intermittent internet connection remains. During the internet drop, I can
still ping the outside world, using both dns resolution and ip address, so
the path is there. But neither IE nor FF will get on the internet after it
drops, until I reboot. Then I can use the internet for a few minutes.

Is this a "scar" or is there some malware still working its magic?
Click to expand...

There's no way to know unless you have checksums of the system from a
known-clean state. See above unfortunately.
 
JM said:
I've got an XP computer here that I'm using as a challenge to myself,
to see if I can repair a computer that's been decimated by malware. I'm
looking for input from the good folks here who have been down
this road.
Click to expand...

If you need input, you obviously aren't up to your challenge.
 
Dustbin said:
If you need input, you obviously aren't up to your challenge.
Click to expand...

You are ignorant now, and you will always be ignorant, because you obviously
do not understand that a good problem solver knows how and is willing to use
whatever resources are available to meet the challenge.
 
JM said:
You are ignorant now, and you will always be ignorant, because you
obviously do not understand that a good problem solver knows how and
is willing to use whatever resources are available to meet the
challenge.
Click to expand...

"a good problem solver" --So, what are _you_ doing asking?
 
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