Geoff said:
Win XP Pro SP3 and updates. I have been "hijacked" by XP Antispyware.
Despite all my efforts to get rid of it it keeps coming back. avdotexe seems
to be the culprit and despite using Malwarebytes, Spybot Search and Destroy
and SUPERAntiSpyware the damned malware keeps coming back. I am starting to
despair of getting rid of it! I tried using System Restore to an earlier
date when I had no problem but when the computer reboots it tells me that no
changes have been made! Where to now?
Download this Avira Antivir Rescue System program which will burn a CD
image to a blank CD. It's updated a few times per day. Insert the CD
into the damaged machine and let it do a scan of your system. Before
starting the scan, select "Configuration" and set to repair or rename
the infected files. Sometimes your machine won't restart after such a
repair process, so you might want to save needed files to another system
before using this. If you can't, then you can move the hard drive to
another machine to copy needed files. You can do that before, or after
this scan.
http://www.free-av.com/en/tools/12/avira_antivir_rescue_system.html
Then run these:
Malwarebytes© Corporation
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam/program/mbam-setup.exe
SuperAntispyware
http://www.superantispyware.com/superantispywarefreevspro.html
AVG now has a Rescue CD that's free. They also have a free USB download
that should work on newer systems that can boot from a USB device. Get
them here:
http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd
You can try some of the CD's mentioned at the following site.
BitDefender was my favorite, but if the infected machine can't connect
to the internet to get updates, Avira comes with current virus
definitions. Also, some of these just won't run on some systems,
perhaps because there's no drivers available for some system devices,
motherboard, graphics card, etc. So try a few of these till you find
one that works:
Burn BitDefender, or another program listed at the link below, to a CD
(using a working machine) and test the infected machine with it.
BitDefender also has a Rootkit checker on the Linux Desktop; run it if
you think that's the problem:
http://www.techmixer.com/free-bootable-antivirus-rescue-cds-download-list/
Download the executable rather than the .iso image, if one is available,
(though no .exe is available for BitDefender).
After the scan is run, if you elect to quarantine files, they're
quarantined to RAM and lost after you reboot. You'll need to copy any
quarantined files to the hard drive, a thumb drive or elsewhere before
exiting.