I recently connected on a Internet Cafe LAN, I run Windows XP Home OEM Version on a notebook with firewall active. I installed all patches and Microsoft programs and Anti-Virus updates. "Clean at time of scan".
The Internet Cafe LAN PC's are running Windows XP Professional (Symantec Ghost copies the 1 CD-R copy of XP Professional is installed on all there PC's will this affect my Windows XP OEM version?
Should I do a clean install to make sure all files are not tampered with and orginal. I am having a lot of computer lock-up and programs crashing Mostly: Encarta, Outlook, and Microsoft Works V7
Thank you, have a great day.
Bob,
What I understand your situation to be is that you recently connected
your notebook to a LAN in an internet cafe that had fixed workstations
also. The fixed workstations in the cafe are periodically refreshed
by Ghost, to prevent residual infections by their users.
How often are the internet cafe workstations refreshed?
Did you connect wired or wirelessly? Does your firewall have a
trusted zone, and if so, how large is it?
How hardened are your browsers?
http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/BrowserSecurity/
http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/sid-7d95f2e495120015e4545b2af8d604c6/index.php
https://testzone.secunia.com/browser_checker/
Assuming that your firewall and virus protection protects you against
hostile ip (internet and wireless) traffic, and viruses, respectively,
you should probably consider spyware contamination as a cause of your
symptoms. Get HijackThis
<
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=3155> and Spybot S&D
<
http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download>.
1) Install and run Spybot. First update it ("Search for updates"),
then run a scan ("Check for problems"). Trust Spybot, and make all
recommended deletions.
2) Install and run HijackThis. Do NOT make any changes immediately.
3) Have your HJT log interpreted by experts at one or more of the
following forums (and post it here):
<
http://forums.tomcoyote.org/>
<
http://63.247.79.145/~coyote/forums/index.php?act=idx>
<
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/index.php?board=17>
<
http://forums.net-integration.net/index.php?s=8a1e9d7c1978cff54ca06a3210c7c1b0&showforum=32>
<
http://www.spywareinfo.com/forums/index.php?s=68ddc23721b063d5411ece09e5ac93f9&showforum=11>
(The latter may or may not respond for you as I have read reports that
the SWI site is currently under DoS attack). All of these forums
appear to be rather busy right now, so be patient.
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
