Apparently my family computer recently got infected with this POS Worm through ActiveX and now I don’t know how to get rid of it. My Norton can’t seem to get recognize it’s presence to delete it either.
My screen background has been replaced with a click-able red screen with a large morbid nuclear warning sign telling me to buy fake Spyware to cure it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
try running a basic program like spybot to see if that helps.
Otherwise try and get a hijackthis log to identify and isolate the source, then it will be much easier to fix.
If you don’t know how to remove it manually then don’t use hijack this.
Easiest option is to get Adaware and then enter Safe Mode and try full scan.
Also disable system restore as that may be used for the virus to recover.
hijackthis is the most surefire way to get rid of the problem shy of a reformat. But eldergod is right, if you dont know what youre doing with it, you should find someone who can read the log before taking ANY action with it.
Hijack actually isn’t the best way and there are many other ways so a reformat is not necessary. Hijack is mostly used not to exactly remove a problem but a very quick way to possibly detect one (if Hijack doesn’t detect doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist). I recommend against Hijack because not only do people who have no idea what they are doing may just select everything instead of the few things which should be removed, Hijack won’t remove the virus entirely and the virus will then just recover from system restore, other parts on comp or just reconnect to server if you have an active internet connection.
I would remove it manually, but like I said, it doesn’t take much knowledge to download Adaware, Update, and full scan. Spybot doesn’t cover as many problems as Adaware, but Spybot’s ad dictionaries are updated and much larger than Adaware’s. Always a good idea to run both.
My Symantic Anti-Virus checks for “all-risks,” so I don’t know if your version only checks if you have a virus, but I think it only checks if you have a virus from when I the basic Norton edition old ones and McAfee. Also Avast checks for major problems quickly.
From my memory, that threat is a spyware at a danger level where it’s considered a virus. Any good anti-virus should remove it. Try running in Safe Mode.
norton is a pos, use kaspersky antivirus. you dont even need to buy it, just use the 30 days trial, but if you really like it (witch i know you will)then buy it.
for antivirus software, AVG is what ive always preferred.
My friends like Avast more but AVG is also a good choice.
Symantec full isn’t free so I guess it’s pointless to mention to him, I like it because it literally takes care of everything. Only downside is if you plan on running full scan be prepared to leave it over night.
Norton sucks only because Avast is free and better.
Anyways, you don’t even need an anti-virus if you just lock your registry…
flatten and install a tight as a guitar string paranoid linux distribution.
OK… the thing is, what if this worm is auto-linking to these same anti-spyware software? It makes me uneasy that a worm constantly makes links and permanently turned my screen background into a “download this antivirus software!” spectacle.
Also, do you mean disabling system restore as in disabling the system restore option which Adaware would provide? Or is this something under Windows configuration?
Worms are harder to get rid of right?
Thanks for the help guys.
Oh and the Norton I have is a company version so it’s 100% free the only reason why this worm fell through was because I don’t use the family comp often so they forget to liveupdate.
I recommend using Hijackthis. There are alot of forums (Like this one) that will help you with removing viruses and any other programs that are just there to bog down your system. Just do a scan with Hijackthis, save the log, then post it on their forums. One of the guys will tell you what to do step by step. They’ve helped me out alot back when I was a noob at computers :tup:
It’s the system restore in Windows. I neber use it anyway as it just eats up a couple gigs of memory.
Like ElderGOD said, turning the computer on in Safe Mode and running Ad-Aware is probably the best mainstream solution you can get for finding / removing spywares / maladies.
Yeah I just dled Ad-aware, how do you access safe mode again? 
My cousin got this two weeks ago, today she brought me her laptop to get rid of it.
I will post later see how it goes.
Damn activeX.
Do you happen to know how to activate safe mode in XP?
hit f8 while booting
On my cousins laptop it came up after I hit [Esc] for boot sequence. After I exited from that the safe mode option popped up. I am currently running Antivirus scan while in safe mode and it has deleted 9 viruses as of now.
NOD32 Antivirus > ALL
try downloading it and running a full scan,IMHO this is by far the best antivirus I’ve used.
QFT, never had a problem with it, and doesn’t eat your CPU/RAM.
If Ad-aware in Safe Mode doesn’t work out I will try that. thx