SOS!!! I was hacked!!! My Windows XP won't boot!!!

[Lucy]

Hi all,

You've got to help me out of this swamp.

I had noticed that my system was boggled by a few malicious adwares
residing in my Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta. Fully protected by Windows
Defender and Symentic AntiVirus, I thought I should have no trouble
getting rid of these malicious adwares which slowed down my system
significantly, especially they open up new windows in IE one after
another, making me very difficult to proceed.

The Windows Defender did notice something wierd and offered to remove
the bad apple; after its working, it asked my permission to reboot. I
granted it.

Then my system won't boot at all. After the DELL booting logo, the
usual Windows XP logo did not show up. The screen showed complete
darkness and only the noise of fan could be heard.

My system died.

-------------------------------------

Now I am stuck.

If I did not turn off system restore, I should be able to use it.

My PC can only boot from 3 options: C harddrive, A floppy disk, and the
CDRom. Unfornately I don't have floppy disk at all; and also I did not
have CDRom installed.

What can I do?

-------------------------------------

If I manage to get hold of a CDRom and install it, is there a rescue
Windows XP CD that can save me? I don't recall if my DELL PC came with
a Windows XP CD, mostly probably not, I remember DELL does not offer
Windows XP Installation CD.

So what can I do?

--------------------------------------

If I did not turn on my system restore, then I guess I am dead, I have
to reformat my C drive, is that true?

Thanks a lot for your help!!!

Lucy

 

[Unk]

Hi all,

You've got to help me out of this swamp.

I had noticed that my system was boggled by a few malicious adwares
residing in my Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta. Fully protected by Windows
Defender and Symentic AntiVirus, I thought I should have no trouble
getting rid of these malicious adwares which slowed down my system
significantly, especially they open up new windows in IE one after
another, making me very difficult to proceed.

The Windows Defender did notice something wierd and offered to remove
the bad apple; after its working, it asked my permission to reboot. I
granted it.

Then my system won't boot at all. After the DELL booting logo, the
usual Windows XP logo did not show up. The screen showed complete
darkness and only the noise of fan could be heard.

My system died.

-------------------------------------

Now I am stuck.

If I did not turn off system restore, I should be able to use it.

My PC can only boot from 3 options: C harddrive, A floppy disk, and the
CDRom. Unfornately I don't have floppy disk at all; and also I did not
have CDRom installed.

What can I do?

-------------------------------------

If I manage to get hold of a CDRom and install it, is there a rescue
Windows XP CD that can save me? I don't recall if my DELL PC came with
a Windows XP CD, mostly probably not, I remember DELL does not offer
Windows XP Installation CD.

So what can I do?

--------------------------------------

If I did not turn on my system restore, then I guess I am dead, I have
to reformat my C drive, is that true?

Thanks a lot for your help!!!

Lucy

Try the Safe Mode with Networking. After the BIOS post beep, press and hold F8

While in the Safe Mode, Download, install, and Run all the below:

Ad-Aware
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Spybot - Search & Destroy by Patrick Kolla
http://security.kolla.de/

NOTE: After you install the above, click "Online" and get the latest
updates for the database. Update it regularly for new spy info.

HijackThis
http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/
http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip

Spyware Blaster
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
http://www.net-integration.net/tools/spywareblaster.html
http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareblaster.html

CWShredder (Removes browser hijacker known as CoolWebSearch)
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/cwshredder.zip
http://doxdesk.com/parasite/CoolWebSearch.html
http://www.intermute.com/products/cwshredder.html

 

[Pennywise]

|>Then my system won't boot at all. After the DELL booting logo, the
|>usual Windows XP logo did not show up. The screen showed complete
|>darkness and only the noise of fan could be heard.

You should see some sort of error, missing OS, bad NTLDR, something

Open your case and make sure your HD is firmly connected at the drive
and MoBo.

 

[DL]

You need a combination of malaware apps, as well as Defender eg SpyBot +
Adaware
Boot into Safe Mode - hit F8 key continually as soon as sys starts up
Try Last Good config, or Safe
Your Dell may have a recovery partition, if it wasnt supplied with recovery
disks - See Dell help specific to your Tag #

 

[Guest]

Lucy

Hackers = Good Guys (and Gals)

Often employed by corporate business and government to improve their
security and locate security holes.

Crackers = Bad Guys (and Gals)

Often employed by organised crime and rogue states to blow up the world and
make live difficult for everyone.

If you are a home PC user it is most unlikely that either has entered your
machine at all, so don't give hackers a bad name, twit !

You have been told - LOL

If you still have PC problems, try asking for advanced advice from,
http://aumha.net

You probably have not been hacked, you most likely have malware onboard, no
big deal, follow removal instructions meticiously and your machine will be
cleaned.

If you are not familiar with HijackThis, do not attempt to run it or delete
any items without guidence, just go to aumha forum, and do "EXACTLY" what
they tell you, and in the "STRICT" sequence that they tell you, they will
walk you thru what has to be done.

Good Luck.

 

[NoStop]

Try the Safe Mode with Networking. After the BIOS post beep, press and
hold F8

While in the Safe Mode, Download, install, and Run all the below:

Ad-Aware
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Spybot - Search & Destroy by Patrick Kolla
http://security.kolla.de/

NOTE: After you install the above, click "Online" and get the latest
updates for the database. Update it regularly for new spy info.

HijackThis
http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/
http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip

Spyware Blaster
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
http://www.net-integration.net/tools/spywareblaster.html
http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareblaster.html

CWShredder (Removes browser hijacker known as CoolWebSearch)
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/cwshredder.zip
http://doxdesk.com/parasite/CoolWebSearch.html
http://www.intermute.com/products/cwshredder.html

Are you absolutely sure that's enough third-party applications to have to
download and install and figure out how to run so that her toy operating
system will actually work once again? Do Windoze users actually get to use
their computers or do they spend all their time having to cleanup after
this insecure "operating system" exposes another vulnerability? Are you
sure that she shouldn't also defrag her Sea drive and run a registry
cleaner? She should at least have to spend more time on these time
consuming efforts to keep Windoze afloat.



--
WGA is the best thing that has happened for Linux in a while.

The ULTIMATE Windoze Fanboy:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2370205018226686613

A 3D Linux Desktop (video) ...

View Some Common Linux Desktops ...
http://shots.osdir.com/

 

[DanS]

Do Windoze users
actually get to use their computers or do they spend all their time
having to cleanup after this insecure "operating system" exposes
another vulnerability?

Well NoStop, I myself use my computer 100% of the time for tasks, as
there never anything to clean up.

As a note, it seems to me that most vulnerabilities in Windows exist in
Internet Explorer. Ergo, stop using IE, and stop MOST vulnerabilities.

Also worth a note, the typical person that has many of these issues is
NOT a techie geek. They are average (insert large OEM company here)
customers that have bought into the whole online world and have not lived
the computer revolution as I, and possibly you have. By 'lived it' I mean
with hands-on PC experience. My first computer was a Commodore 64 back in
the early '80's. Back in the early days of PC's, a user HAD to know how
the PC worked, just to keep it running. Now grandma & grandpa have PC's,
as do Aunt's and Uncle's, people from all walks of life, from 10 to 80
years old, and Windows is probably one of the reason's why,
unfortunately.

I myself am considering a Linux box. But why ? My PC runs great, all my
s/w is for Windows, I can't program for Linux (and don't want to learn),
and in my technical job, we use all Windows s/w (and I'm not talking
about M$ Office), so i wouldn't be able to work at home at all.

FWIW, if every person you had suggested switching to Linux had, it would
be the Linux forums/newsgroups then with loads of posts asking how can I
do this, fix that. Granted some of the distros have been designed to
easily install, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. Windows XP installs
easily too.

I am not defending M$, and never will, just the people using it.

One particularly annoying habit I see of Linux users is.. 'Hey, check out
this screenshot of my desktop'. Who gives a s**t what your desktop looks
like. They ALL look the same, to 99.9% of the people, including me.

 

[Doug]

Where are you people getting these 'malicious adware' pgms that
you talk about? It is not a common problem amongst people that I
know and I haven't had one for years once I started using a
proper firewall, anti-virus pgm and all Windows updates. Right
now I find the Windows firewall to be quite adequate for my
useage.

Doug W.

 

[RA]

Where are you people getting these 'malicious adware' pgms that
you talk about? It is not a common problem amongst people that I
know and I haven't had one for years once I started using a
proper firewall, anti-virus pgm and all Windows updates. Right
now I find the Windows firewall to be quite adequate for my
useage.

Have you ever used an app to remove malware even though you think you don't
have it? Unless they start having problems, most people who have it on their
systems don't know it is there.

 

[Doug]

RA: Every week or so I run Spybot, Adaware just to check. I also
keep their definitions up-to-date as well. Also run Root Kit
Revealer. So far so good.

Also check with a few other utilities monthly at least.

Doug W.

 

[Guest]

I agree, I don't see evidence to suggest you were hacked. Sounds like a
software malfunction, possibly caused by whatever Windows Defender removed.
It could be that whatever was removed was written in such a way that it
caused problems when removed.

Note that IE 7 is BETA software and is not intended to be run on production
systems like yours, because it can have bugs and incompatibility and is not
fully supported. Newer is not always better. It is possible that IE 7 had
something to do with this.

I doubt it is necessary to format your hard drive, and doing so would delete
any files that you had saved there. It may be that your easiest way to
recover might be to reinstall Windows from a CD-rom. You would have to
re-install any programs that you had installed, however.

If you boot from a Windows install CD, it does offer some recovery options,
but I'm not sure whether they will help you.

 

[Lucy]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks you all for your help!

But it seems that after the DELL flashy logo, nothing occurred except
for a blank screen. I could not even press F8 to have the boot options.
But the blank screen did not say C drive was missing or any file was
correct, etc.

What can I do now?

thanks a lot!

 

[Guest]

try f2 to get to the bios. if thats working then try f12 for boot options

 

[DL]

What do you mean 'could not F8'?
You just continually hit F8 as soon as you switch on

 

[anna55]

I had same problem with my laptop, i sent to www.microtechmall.com ,
they fixed in a week and ship back to me. working again like new.
thanks to microtech, very fast and good service.