help on startpage.B trojan

[Mark]

can somebody please help? i am running a system with XP home edition which
runs very sluggish for a 2.5Ghz machine.. upon boot up and then looking at
the processses section under the task manager, i see a process tittled
"realevent.exe" that is replicating itself to the tune of several hundred
times and keeps going. an AVG6 pop up says i have the trojan horse
"startpage.B" and recommends that i run the AVG complete scan. I have run
the scan with the latest updates and it detects nothing. does anybody know
how to get rid of this thing and is this thing responsible for this
"realevent.exe" that keeps replicating and hogging up all my cpu?. i am
very grateful to any help i can get.

thank you all very much

mark

 

[Dan Shackelford]

can somebody please help? i am running a system with XP home edition
which runs very sluggish for a 2.5Ghz machine.. upon boot up and then
looking at the processses section under the task manager, i see a
process tittled "realevent.exe" that is replicating itself to the tune
of several hundred times and keeps going. an AVG6 pop up says i have
the trojan horse "startpage.B" and recommends that i run the AVG
complete scan. I have run the scan with the latest updates and it
detects nothing. does anybody know how to get rid of this thing and is
this thing responsible for this "realevent.exe" that keeps replicating
and hogging up all my cpu?. i am very grateful to any help i can get.

thank you all very much

mark

If you are unable to remove the virus, it may be in the "restore"
directory which XP will prevent any anti-virus program from accessing. You
will need to disable restore, run the anti-virus, then re-enable restore
once you have been cleaned. See:
http://download.nai.com/products/mcafee-avert/SystemHelpDocs/DisableSysRestore.htm

Also, see:
http://fr.trendmicro-europe.com/consumer/security_info/ve_detail.php?Vname=TROJ_STARTPAGE.W

 

[David W. Hodgins]

the processses section under the task manager, i see a process tittled
"realevent.exe" that is replicating itself to the tune of several hundred
times and keeps going. an AVG6 pop up says i have the trojan horse

From http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist_r.htm
for realevent.exe,

"Another RealOne Player background task. See RNDAL and EVNTSVC elsewhere in these pages for more
details about RealOne Player. Although we are not certain about it, REALEVENT seems to be involved
in pulling from Real Networks servers something Real Networks want you to see (whether it is Real
Networks product information, advertising, etc..., we are not sure).

Recommendation :
If you decide not to uninstall RealOne Player, rename REALEVENT.EXE to REALEVENT.OLD – RealOne
Player works fine without it, and you will have one less Real Networks background task accessing the
Internet without you knowing what it does exactly."

"startpage.B" and recommends that i run the AVG complete scan. I have run
the scan with the latest updates and it detects nothing. does anybody know
how to get rid of this thing and is this thing responsible for this

See http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_99610.htm, for some additional info.
If AVG is finding it when it runs, but not during the full scan, then
it's probably in the system restore. Disable the system restore, and
after rebooting, run the scan again. You should also try another scanner.
You could try an online scan, such as www.ravantivirus.com

Regards, Dave Hodgins

 

[Mark]

Thank you David and Dan for your help and insight into this problem.
mark