Robert36 said:
I've got a trojan virus I'm trying to remove and I've been running
McAfee and Anti-Malware several times to try to clean it out.
Everytime I restart my computer I'll run a virus scan and everytime I
have to delete about 30 detections. I've been told I need to disable
my system restore feature and run a full system scan with it
disabled, and then enable it after the scan. If I go in to disable my
system restore feature I get an error message saying "system restore
is unable to protect your computer. Please restart your computer,
and then run system restore again." Is there another way I can go
about this?
MS has a lot of strange messages. Since that's what you want, do it.
The "not protecting" part simply means that it's not creating restore
points. Which is what you want to do - turn them off. It's a
meaningless message when that is what you want to do. <g>
Here's how I do it when I'm chasing a virus:
Go to the System Restore dialog; start; programs; accessories; system
tools; system restore.
There, in the LEFT pane you'll see "System Restore Settings" or
something like that.
Click that.
In the resulting window, tick the box in the upper area that says to
Turn Off System Restore on All Drives.
BTW, since System REstore only works on system drives, when you go back
to re-engage the restore points, you ONLY need to monitor your system
drive (usually C). There is nothing to monitor in a normal system on
other, non-system drives. SR only works on system files so it's wasted
on non-system drives.
After you re-engage the SR, create a new restore point, just to be
sure you did everything correctly. Done.
All that said, the reason to get rid of system restore points is to
prevent you from ever using an infected restore point that would bring
back the virus/trojan/worm/ whatever. It is not necessarily the reason
you keep getting it back again right now. But, it's still something
that needs to be done so go ahead with it, and then continue your
trouble-shooting.
If removing the system restore points doesn't help anything:
From the symptoms you describe, what you actually have might be a
different one than is being found. Something else may be the root of
the problem. It's "smart" enough sometimes to realize that part of it
has been removed and simply reinstalls the malware on you. You should
try looking a description of the manual fixes for the virus you found
and the details on its name at Symantec or any good AV program's web
site.
After that, come back and give as much relevent detail about what's
happening as you can, including naming any malware that it finds and
that reinstalls itself. There ARE ways to track it down.
HTH,
Twayne`
