Antispyware headaches

[Egon]

Somebody help!! My kids got into some spyware/adware that
was slowing the system down. I did a restore from a
previous date, which worked fine. All was good. Then I
installed the MS antispyware beta, scanned, and it found
22 programs that needed removal. I ran the removal, and
things went downhill from there. Now I have a trojan, a
URL hijacker, and a spider that won't go away no matter
how many times I scan and remove, the restore from
previous date doesn't work, my background is a blue screen
that says IE has encountered a fatal error, can't run in
normal mode and should be cleaned with an anti-spyware
program! Aaaahhhh!!!

 

[Mikolaj]

Somebody help!! My kids got into some spyware/adware that
was slowing the system down. I did a restore from a
previous date, which worked fine. All was good. Then I
installed the MS antispyware beta, scanned, and it found
22 programs that needed removal. I ran the removal, and
things went downhill from there. Now I have a trojan, a
URL hijacker, and a spider that won't go away no matter
how many times I scan and remove, the restore from
previous date doesn't work, my background is a blue screen
that says IE has encountered a fatal error, can't run in
normal mode and should be cleaned with an anti-spyware
program! Aaaahhhh!!!

Start in Safe mode and run system scanning again. Also try other "cleaning"
software:

McAfee Stinger http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
Spybot Search&Destroy http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2471.html
HijackThis http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3155.html
CWShredder http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3019.html
Ad-Aware SE Personal http://www.lavasoft.com/software/adaware/

Kind regards
Mikolaj Kaminski
MS-MVP, Poland

 

[steve]

-----Original Message-----
Somebody help!! My kids got into some spyware/adware that
was slowing the system down. I did a restore from a
previous date, which worked fine. All was good. Then I
installed the MS antispyware beta, scanned, and it found
22 programs that needed removal. I ran the removal, and
things went downhill from there. Now I have a trojan, a
URL hijacker, and a spider that won't go away no matter
how many times I scan and remove, the restore from
previous date doesn't work, my background is a blue screen
that says IE has encountered a fatal error, can't run in
normal mode and should be cleaned with an anti-spyware
program! Aaaahhhh!!!
.
This sounds familiar. It is like finding a needle in the

haystack. I personally have not had any trouble with
virus's or spyware on my computers but I have fix many of
my friends and co-workers computers. I reformated my
computers and installed norton anti virus spybot seach and
destroy and zonealarm firewall. I keep all up to date and
dowload all microsoft updates. My xp machines I used sp2's
firewall and now I have microsoft's spyware software on
all my machines. spybot is not real time protect and
microsoft has twice as many syware definitions.

I have chased down and delete spyware just to find it has
reinstalled itself with a new name. Even deleteing it from
the registy does not help

Try running your computer in safe mode and then running
your virus software and your spyware removal tools this
will get rid of more items. also get a firewall this will
stop some of the spyware from going out onto the internet
and bringing in more spyware.

try several spyware removal tools they all seam to find
and remove things that the other one's can't

norton anti virus has worked better for me than macafee
and norton anti virus now has adware definitions in the
updates.

 

[Andre Da Costa]

Yes, do a full system scan in safe mode, open Microsoft AntiSpyware, on the
scan page, choose Scan Options > Full System scan, make sure all boxes are
checked then click "Run Scan Now".

Restart in Safe Mode Instructions:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/boot_failsafe.mspx
Also:
Run antivirus (with current definitions) while you are in safe mode.