ok, i am at the end, about two seconds from throwing the comp.
Sounds like fun. :-/
first off my OS is XP home. i have a nasty vius, tried all anti viruses.
AVG 7, Trend PC-cillin, Norton and McAffe. i have Ad-aware and Spybot S&D.
Ever thought that maybe it is not a virus exactly?
i run all those on start up!!!
Your PC must take a long time to boot.
Personally I don't use a virus scanner myself, when I am simply aware
of how things like viruses work. Easier to not get one...
didnt get rid of the problem. have downloaded every
patch, YOU (microsoft) have told me too
Well I am not from Microsoft. Obviously, Microsoft have plugged their
site into the Usenet to obtain free public support.
I will bill them... ;-)
when i get a NEW virus from a scan.
You must be a really bad computer user to get so many viruses. Open
those e-mail attachments do we?
A. Find out what tasks you are running. And using a program beyond
Task Manager (like kill2.exe) should view them all. As I only recently
came to realise that hackers can hide tasks from Task Manager.
B. Check your user list for weak passwords. As you would be amazed at
how many people share their drives over the Net, with even having the
Administrator account with an easy to guess (or no) password.
That would help little, when it keeps all the tasks in place. Nice
firewall through, until your local hacker turns it off.
Now, i just reformatted my entire hard disk. I still
have the same problem.
Now there is an extreme step that kills almost everything. Had the
same weak Administrator password did we? And by weak password I
mean... No password, a person's name, a common word (like power, god
or server) or a word in the English language.
Put a few numbers and funny characters in your passwords and you will
have stopped your common hacker stone dead. And don't forget to also
have only TCP/IP binded to your Internet connection.
Something is killing my internet connection, i have
to refresh a million times to get to pages, three hours to get here.
On the Usenet...
something is continuously downloading,
All your personal files. <big grin>
That is not your problem though, when in truth most people's systems
are very boring. And hackers usually just like to peek.
i dont know where or what but my
connection is showing recieved bytes all the time, it nev er stops.
Sounds like some hacker is using your computer as a public file
server. Outgoing files is much more likely to be your problem, which
will also cause download and connection problems.
Obviously if you disconnect the cable the sends will end, but what
ever is on your system will still try to connect to where ever it
wants to be.
You are just seeing packets no doubt and now have no Net connection to
confirm your much improved Net connection speed.
I am soryy most of this is VENTING, but this SUCKS, is there
anyway to Really Completely format the hard disk, because formatting
through the OS disk didnt work.
Formatting works well enough. However, the main problem is that you
are expecting some virus scanner to fix the problem for you. However,
the truth is that hackers don't use viruses much, when they use
official programs for unofficial uses.
For example hackers often install and use Serv-U to obtain an FTP
connection to your entire system. And yet at the same time people are
using this FTP server software for allowing official connections to
their own computers.
A virus scanner has a very hard time telling the difference between
official and unofficial uses of an official application.
Anything would probably help, please speak english i
dont know fancy programming jargon!!!
On any common window go to Tools, Folder Options, View. Then deselect
the "Hide protected operating system files (recommended)" option.
While deleting one's operating system files is a bad idea, but so can
any hacker simply hide whatever they want behind here simply by using
the attrib.exe +s command.
Now search your entire system for *.mpg *.avi *.mp3 *.zip and possibly
more files. What you are looking for here are one, or usually more,
files that are to be found in a hidden (+h) and/or system (+s) sub
folder. This folder will now appear shaded out in WinXP if this hacker
did a suitable job.
Most of all these files will appear valuable and little like the free
junk that Microsoft gives away. Popular movies, music, software games
and applications.
If it looks good and you did not put it there, then odds are that some
other person did.
And somewhere near these media files, I am willing to bet large funds
on, is the control system for this file server. Possibly even in the
same folder.
If you are wise you won't simply delete it, when in your case this
hacker may simply exploit your weak passwords again. You could change
all your passwords, but odds are that the hacker did not go to that
much effort. So it will either be the Administrator account or one
like User: Brian Password: Brian.
Also deleting it will pose a little problem, when these programs won't
want to be deleted. As before you can delete them, you will need to
shut down these active tasks.
Another way to find this suspected problem is to go through your task
list and to see what is on your hard disk. As sure enough this file
server program needs to be loaded as a task.
For example your task list will contain the official program
svchost.exe, but hackers can hide their server software behind names
like this just by renaming them.
So for each and every task search your system (make sure your system
is set to see both hidden and system files first!) and find out how
many copies of this program there are.
Ones in your Windows and system32 folder should not be a problem, but
ones hidden in sub folders could be. And one *huge* clue is what when
running the program (ideally using the /? help option) it gives a name
that does not match the file name. Someone is trying to hide the
program in other words.
Don't go about killing all your important system tasks, but do check
on the Net to confirm what each one of those tasks does. And I am also
willing to bet that you have more than a few SpyWare programs running
that you simply did not know was there.
If you wish to be lazy, then you can simply kill the tasks, one by
one, until your high bandwidth use suddenly drops flat. You may cause
Windows to fall over in the process, but a simple reset will just put
you back to square one anyway.
Finding out those pesky tasks (and removing and relocating the files)
sure saves you formatting your hard disk again. And if you do find
that a hacker has left his own control system on your computer then I
hope that your last file you send will be to e-mail me a copy.
See my site below on how to do that.
Finally, I am also willing to bet that if you turn your computer off
for an hour or two, then upon turning it back on, your Net connection
will be just fine for the first 5 to 30 minutes. As it takes other
people that much time to realise that your computer is now back on and
to resume their download.
Good luck,
Cardman.
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk