Cleaning up after a virus

[Mark]

I just had a warning about a virus on my machine. I immedeatly ran my
anti-virus and found trojan horses. I also ran Adaware and Spybot and found
numerous junk to clean up. The problem I'm still having is I can't view any
files in Windows Explorer. My CPU usage jumps to 100% and I can't close it
unless I stop it with Task Manager. My programs seem to run fine. Is there
any way I can repair this. I'm running Win2000, 333mhz PII, 30 gig HD and
256 RAM.
Thanks for your help.
Mark.

 

[Guest]

Just a couple of ??? to try and help.
When you ran the Virus scan, did it delete the files
And now that your CPU is jumping up to 100%, if you look at the processes running under Task Manager, what other processes are using CPU time
Which Anti-virus are you running? And are the virus def. files up to date?

 

[Eric McG]

In most cases, the AV app can only do part of the job. You have to go to your AV
app's website to review the remove procedure for that particular
virus/trojan/worm. In many cases they will have a tool to do it for you, along
with a procedure to manually repair your system, if you so desire.

For example, if you use Norton's AV app, go here:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/tools.list.html

 

[Mark]

Yes, BPrice, I ran the AV witch was updated last week and I updated it again
and ran it again. It healed out 3 viruses and quarenteened 2 others. I use
AVG by Grisoft. System Idle Process is running 92%.

Eric, I looked on the Grisoft site and saw instructions for the worm
removal. I will try that. I've been working on this for almost 6 hours.

I ran the Win2K repair from the disk and it caused more problems with
opening some programs. I had to re-install Outlook Express just to read
your responses. If this doesn't work maybe I should re-instal Windows. I
have all my files on a sparate HD.
Thanks, Mark

 

[Steve Nielsen]

System Idle is just that - Idle = doing nothing. That's not a problem.

What sort of repair did you do and from what disk? If you did a repair
installation of Win2k fromt the Win2K CDROM then you will need to
re-install the Service Pack you were at, possibly Internet Explorer and
any hotfixes/security patches. It depends where the system was at with
those prior to the repair install. If there are any other applications
that required a specific Service Pack level that was not included on the
CD you used for the repair install then you may need to re-install them
as well.

Steve

 

[Mark Randazzo]

Thanks Steve, Eric and BPrice for your help. I did a repair from the Win2k
disk and that caused more problems. I then re-installed Win2k over the
exsisting OS and I still had the problem. I have all my data stored on a
separate hard drive. I was able to go into safe mode and move additional
files that I wanted. I finally took the plunge and re-formated and
re-installed Win2k. It took awhile but not as long as it took to try to fix
the problem.
Thanks again.
Mark

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Sorry it was not an easy solution for you. Sometimes the OS gets so
messed up that starting from scratch is the only sure solution. Glad you
got it going again.

Make sure to get up to at least SP2 and do the security patches against
Blaster, Welchia, etc., and get a decent and updated a/v program and
firewall (several good freeware products out there for both) to protect
your machine.

Steve