Adware/Spyware

[Todd Daniel]

Yes, cleaning the adware/spyware off my daughter's PC is a normal routine, but this time an adware popup generator has defeated me. It constantly shoots up ads rendering the computer unuseable. I have tried the following:

1) Ran Norton Antivirus 2005, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Microsoft AntiSpyware, each several times.
2) Set Internet Explorer back to the defaults.
3) Started uninstalling and/or deleting anything that looked suspicious.
4) Prayed to the Almighty and vowed that I would stop watching PeeWee Herman reruns.

Short of reformatting the hard drive, is there anything else I can do? Even if I block it, it seems to replicate itself - sort of like rabbits.

Now I know why we have this PC forum - great idea!

Thanks to all,

Todd Daniel

[Chris Waldrip]

Did any of the 'removers' identify what the bugger is? Sometimes they'll report they found X but couldn't remove it. Have you tried Adaware?

[Terry Johnson]

This sounds like the same thing that infected one of my co-worker's computers at home. He tried using adaware, spybot search & destroy and the new M$ malware detector. Some of them could detect and name the adware, but none of them were able to delete it effectively. It made use of some kind of rootkit to hide critical files that it could use to replicate itself when his adware removal utilities tried to delete it. Eventually he ended up having to wipe and reformat his hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch.  As awful as that sounds, it might actually be the most time-effective solution to your problem. Compare how long you have already spent trying to remove the adware - and how much more time are you likely to spend trying to remove it - against how long it would take you to reinstall Windoze and the other software that you need on that computer.

[Martha Shannon]

I agree with Terry. I have a Windoze station here at home and unfortunately it has fallen prey to many adware/spyware and I have combated it with reformat and reinstall. Finally upgraded to XP and don't have nearly as many probs as before, but still an issue. Since it isn't my computer, I can't tell my spouse how to surf, but I steer clear of sites I don't already know - "it's a scary world out there Wilbur"

[Todd Daniel]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I think the solution is to reformat. It is four years old and I'm sure the Registry is loaded with tons of garbage. I did have the adware/spyware problem under control for many months, but then my daughter opened an attachment that she thought was from a friend.

Like a proud fighter pilot that has just been shot down by the Red Barron, I salute my enemy. This particular adware program is good - whatever you do to delete or block it, it simply replicates.

Todd Daniel

[Christina Wellman]

i've been successful saving machines like that...there are some bug removers listed on the symantec site, and sometimes you have to boot into safe mode before they work.  AVG seems to do fine for most of my clients.

or...maybe you could get her a mac?

[Todd Daniel]

I would get her a Mac but she has a large collection of games that are PC only. My other daughter has an iBook and I have eMacs for home and home office, so it's a 3-1 ratio. It's probably good to keep one PC around so that we Apple users can appreciate how lucky we are.

[Christina Wellman]

soon you can run all that on the same machine with double boot...i'm exited about the possiblities.  my granddaughter has a G4 that runs virtual pc...work ok...

[Todd Daniel]

Thanks, Christina! I used AVG 7.1 and it successfully cleaned my child's PC. The machine now also starts and runs faster. She is a happy kid.

Once again, it's great to have this PC area for those of us who must still deal with them.

And yes, I'm looking forward to the dual boot computer.

[Christina Wellman]

Excellent!  i'm glad that helped!  i guess i'm fortunate that i have needed to work with both...and i'm now very interested in linux...

christina

[Terry Johnson]

On a related topic, does anyone know if any adware/spyware affecting Macs has been found? I used to not worry about this much until recently. The Sony rootkit was a disturbing development, along with the news that they were working on a Mac version. Someone put a Sony/EMI CD in one of the computers at work, and now it won't recognize audio CDs normally anymore. iTunes won't read them at all anymore on that computer, and Windows Explorer shows all the music tracks as being 1kb in size -- you can't rip the songs or copy the disc.

[Chris Waldrip]

it depends on how you define spyware and adware. If you're talking about software that's installed on your computer without any notification or permission - nope. None out there.

If you're talking about software that is intentionally (and unknowingly sometimes) installed by someone on your machine, then there's lots out there.

The problem most of the Windows world faces is the first scenario. The second senerio is the more likely one for Mac users. Typically defined as a Trojan Horse (a program that promises one thing, and only or in addition to, does another), you may not even know you've installed it. This is the case with the Sony Root Kit.

There are also keyloggers (record key strokes) and other such spyware for the Mac, but they have to be installed by someone who knows the administrator password of the machine, or at least physical access to the machine. In these cases there's no pretecting your machine.

[Christina Wellman]

Root Kit...that's what I heard too.

Supposedly the number one fix for that is to operate your machine most of the time as  a limited user, and login with a different capability when you need to do admin stuff.

christina