A Sea of Troubles

[harry.watson]

I need some Help.
Two days ago I got a virus
"WORM Bagle 1"after opening an attachment ,supposedly from my ISP provider
NTLWorld,a self inflicted injury you could call it. This was picked up by
AVG and by running a scan the virus wa 'Healed' as they call it. I am
running XP Pro and yesterday tried to copy a CD using Roxio 6 CD creator.
The The program balked at starting initially by eventually got going. It
stalled halfway through the copying and came up with one of those error
messages that mean nothing to us humble peasantry,so I binned the blank and
tried again . This time "Disc recorded successfully".. except it doesn't
play. I uninstalled Roxio 6 and reinstalled, the installation froze halfway,
and again the second time. I decided on a System Restore but was rewarded
with a "Windows was unable to restore to March 3rd", and again to two other
dates chosen. Could this be the work of the WORM or what.?
Also since installing XP about a month or so back I have been blessed with a
taskbar one inch deep. this is a pain as it hides the OK or APPLY buttons
on some applications. I have tried moving the bar to the side of the
screen, but this only happens when I dont want it to, otherwise it wo'nt
move.
Oh and my car's steering rack packed in this week too.The car is being
fixed, but I really do need some help with the other stuff... Pleeaase
FRED

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[RA]

I don't know if this will help but we had a user who got the virus also. It
was discovered quickly and removed and we thought everything would be ok.
But some strange things started happening with various programs and I didn't
even think about the virus being the cause. I ran AdAware6 just because this
user usually has tons of spyware on her pc. I just assume anything that goes
wrong on her machine is because of spyware. Adaware found over 6000 files
that had been put into various directories on her system. I logged into the
pc as administrator and updated the virus protection and ran a full scan and
it took all those files out. Apparently, the initial discovery of the virus
by McAfee only disabled or removed part of the virus and left all the rest
on.
If you unlock the taskbar, you should be able to resize it.
Can't help you with your steering, sorry.

 

[Mad Max]

Lo harry;
Give this site a try.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/forums/
Have a look around and post in the area that suits your problem.
I wouldn't go on the net without that link.

Mad Max

 

[Nick Burns]

He was not using McAfee and besides McAfee Virus don't find spy's. Once you
get the virus it does it's damage to your system regardless of when you
remove it. You are running a wounded system and who knows what problems you
will encounter in the feature.

 

[RA]

I guess I didn't explain well enough. I don't expect McAfee to find spyware.
That is why I run AdAware. McAfee warned of a virus and McAfee said it
deleted it. I ran AdAware later and it found a ton of files that the virus
dumped on the system. I then ran McAfee again with updated ref files and it
cleaned them off. If I have any problems with the "wounded system" I will
just reload the image, thanks.

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

Once you get the virus it does it's damage to your system regardless of when you
remove it. You are running a wounded system and who knows what problems you
will encounter in the feature.

The expectation in Win9x is that any malware that has not hatched a
destructive payload can be removed, without leaving the system
unfixably "wounded". If "more secure" XP on NTFS forces you into a
world of "virus? oh dear, better format and re-install", then it's a
far poorer proposition than Win9x, no matter what the marketoids or
feature-list checkboxes say.

Your problems may be:
- co-incidental
- related to flaky hardware
- caused by persistant active malware
- caused by other un-detected malware
- from damage secondary to bad exits and "auto-fix"
- from damage secondary to av "cleaning" of viruses

If you are forced to bad-exit, the next boot will see AutoChk
automatically "fixing" file system errors. The "fixes" can leave the
affected files broken, but no longer detectable as broken. That's why
it's crucial to preserve logs of what AutoChk and ChkDsk have done.

If you have a genuine virus that infects inside existing code files,
then when the antivirus "cleans" these files, they may be left damaged
(though no longer infected or infectious). That's why it's crucial to
preserve logs of what antivirus detects and "cleans".

If you rely on informal antivirus (av) scanning of the system, or use
an antivirus that only scans "some" file types, or an antivirus that
is not up to date, what you see may not be all there is. By
"informal", I mean a scan done while malware is actively running -
something that NTFS pretty much obliges you to do.

Once Windows is running from the HD, the malware could be running too;
yes, even in "safe mode".

Yep, commercial malware's another problem that traditional av won't
detect. It's as important to make sure your anti-commercial-malware
tools are up to date as your av, though because commercial malware has
to at least *pretend* to be there by your consent, informal scanning
(from within the "infected" OS) is OK.

Bagle.A doesn't affect motor steering; that's Bagle.XJ.

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

Running Windows-based av to kill active malware is like striking
a match to see if what you are standing in is water or petrol.

 

[harry.watson]

Thanks to all who replied,Sounds like its a format and reinstall problem
regrettably,
"RA" nomail@home wrote If you unlock the taskbar you should be able to
resize.... How do I "Unlock" the taskbar please ?