Need help pls

[Veris and Amee Young]

Hi

Hubby was on pc and we think we have virus. All the icons from desktop are
gone. I can't use the windows button or anything. We tried to go to safe
mode but that is not working. We put the xp pro disk in cd drive to get in
to safe mode no luck. How can we see and scan for virus if we can't see any
icon or get in to programs?


Thanks

Amee

 

[Xandros]

Firstly you don't access Safe Mode through the Windows XP Pro disc. You
access Safe Mode by starting the computer and tapping the F8 key. Does that
work for you?

 

[Mick Murphy]

Accessing Safe Mode:

To get into Safe mode, tap F8 right at Power On / Startup, and use UP arrow
key to get to Safe Mode from list of options, then hit ENTER.

 

[inavlis]

Hi Youngs,

As stated earlier use the F8. If the problem still persists, pops in the
installation CD to do a recovery console. Your data will still be intact
though your app stability may get compromised afterwards (just reinstall the
apps)

HTH,

 

[David B.]

How is the recovery console going to help? It is pretty obvious the OP will
have no clue (no offense to the OP) what to do with a command line interface
once they get there.

 

[Veris and Amee Young]

I did realize my mistake about having cd in there after hubby told me. He
didn't know I was trying to do that. We also found out that with our USB
keyboard we couldn't get to F8. We used one of our old wired keyboards to
get to F8. I know that safe mode thing didn't work . Don't remember exactly
why. We started up the pc normal way. When we lost all the icons again from
desktop along with start and everything in taskbar we did CLT+ALT+DEL and
went to application. Started new task and browsed to our McAfee and ran for
virus scan. It didn't find anything. Then we ran IE went to trend micro site
to do online scan. It found TROJ_QDOWN.I, TROJ_VMDO.BBV bunch of spyware,
adware, Hackingtools.cain and vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. We
cleaned it and it deleted most of the things except VMDO.BBV and some of
the MS vulnerabilities. So now we have to figure out how to delete this
VMDO thing and fix the vulnerabilities. I am still not sure why our McAfee
didn't pick up any of these things. We have it updated.

 

[Jim]

I did realize my mistake about having cd in there after hubby told me. He
didn't know I was trying to do that. We also found out that with our USB
keyboard we couldn't get to F8. We used one of our old wired keyboards to
get to F8. I know that safe mode thing didn't work . Don't remember exactly
why. We started up the pc normal way. When we lost all the icons again from
desktop along with start and everything in taskbar we did CLT+ALT+DEL and
went to application. Started new task and browsed to our McAfee and ran for
virus scan. It didn't find anything. Then we ran IE went to trend micro
site to do online scan. It found TROJ_QDOWN.I, TROJ_VMDO.BBV bunch of
spyware, adware, Hackingtools.cain and vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office.
We cleaned it and it deleted most of the things except VMDO.BBV and some
of the MS vulnerabilities. So now we have to figure out how to delete this
VMDO thing and fix the vulnerabilities. I am still not sure why our McAfee
didn't pick up any of these things. We have it updated.

McAfee didn't pick up your infections because it isn't a good AV program.
My suggestion is to ditch McAfee and replace it with NOD32.

You might be much further along if you also use David Lipman's MULTI_AV
package. Since no one AV program can find everything, the overlap of
multiple AV software tends to reduce the likelihood of missing malware.

It would seem that what you are really missing is just the shortcuts. These
are easily restored although doing so will take some time.

Jim

 

[Veris and Amee Young]

I thought that it wasn't good to have multiple anti virus programs because
they want to take over and mess up more then it helps. We are using McAfee
because it is free with our Comcast.

Amee

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I thought that it wasn't good to have multiple anti virus programs

Correct.


... because
they want to take over and mess up more then it helps.

No, it's because they can conflict with other.

We are using McAfee
because it is free with our Comcast.

Your choice of course, but in my view, free or not, it's the second
worst anti-virus program available. Only Norton is worse.

If you want a free anti-virus program, I recommend Avast, which is a
considerably better choice.

 

[Daave]

No, it's because they can conflict with other.

Clarification:

It *is* actually good to have multiple anti-malware programs; in fact,
it is recommended. I am sure what you mean is it is not good to *run*
more than one at a time because of potential conflicts.

And if we narrow anti-malware programs to anti-virus programs, OP needs
to be careful about how they are configured. If they both in the
background at the same time, that can of course cause potential
conflicts. Come to think of it, we don't need to narrow this at all; I
recall AdAware and Spybot S&D conflicting.

 

[Jim]

I thought that it wasn't good to have multiple anti virus programs because
they want to take over and mess up more then it helps. We are using McAfee
because it is free with our Comcast.

Amee

I would not use McAfee even if they paid me.
With the possible exception of Norton, any other product does a better job.
I do have both Spybot and Ad-aware on my systems. They only run when I
invoke them.
Jim

 

[inavlis]

Hi Youngs,

As said by previous posters, that the real problem of having multiple
antivirus is conflicting resident scanners. I have avast free edition for my
personal use, and I think it is good enough. NOD32 is rather overkill if you
are just casual users. Anyway, the link at the bottom is to download the
multiple AV program they were talking about. Read the webby carefully.

HTH,

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/01/09/scan-your-computer-with-multiple-anti-virus-for-free/

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi Youngs,

As said by previous posters, that the real problem of having multiple
antivirus is conflicting resident scanners. I have avast free edition for my
personal use, and I think it is good enough. NOD32 is rather overkill if you
are just casual users.

I agree that the free Avast is a good choice, but I strongly disagree
that NOD32 is "rather overkill." Good as Avast is, NOD32 is even
better, and the better the product that you use, the more secure you
will be.