Thread: Virus, yippee...

It's Tuesday
MS have probably released some new updates (hence the balloon alerts)

If your machine is abnormally slow, it's probably automatically downloading the new updates

if you don't trust the balloon things, goto http://update.microsoft.com

If you're getting pop-ups and whatnot, you might have adware/spyware/malware. I'd recommend doing a scan with Ad-Aware. A lot of anti-virus things won't get most adware, so it's probably a good idea to do a scan with Ad-Aware just to make sure.

Try getting AVG free, it works great, and automagically examines your computer, and doesn't make it horrendously slow!Try getting AVG free, it works great, and automagically examines your computer, and doesn't make it horrendously slo

Originally Posted by Seismosaur

Try getting AVG free, it works great, and automagically examines your computer, and doesn't make it horrendously slow!Try getting AVG free, it works great, and automagically examines your computer, and doesn't make it horrendously slo

Anchor test?

=_-

Pssh.

Originally Posted by Bayside

If you're getting pop-ups and whatnot, you might have adware/spyware/malware. I'd recommend doing a scan with Ad-Aware. A lot of anti-virus things won't get most adware, so it's probably a good idea to do a scan with Ad-Aware just to make sure.

Yeah, about that. Is there a free version these days?? I had trouble finding one last night.

Originally Posted by Ynot

It's Tuesday
MS have probably released some new updates (hence the balloon alerts)

If your machine is abnormally slow, it's probably automatically downloading the new updates

if you don't trust the balloon things, goto http://update.microsoft.com

It's gotta be more than that though, I mean I get all of these pop ups (from internet explorer) when I'm not even using the internet.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Yeah, about that. Is there a free version these days?? I had trouble finding one last night.

spybot S&D
http://www.safer-networking.org/

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Yeah, about that. Is there a free version these days?? I had trouble finding one last night.

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download...virus/us/frt/0

It works.

And for the love of all chocolate and pastries, use Firefox!
(Or, technically, anything that isn't Internet Explorer.)

Yea... Suuuuure it's from watching heroes....

Stop watching porn mes...

Oh noes, I've been caught.

Thanks for the links guys.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Right so my computer seems to be infected with some viruses.. I'm pretty sure this is the result of watching Heroes on some dubious site but anyway.. I got a free Symantec anti-virus thing from my university and am doing a full system scan for the second time right now. The first one doesn't seem to have fixed the problem since I still get random pop-ups, security alerts, and it takes forever for my computer to restart. So what can I do in addition to this?

Also I'm constantly getting "system alerts", it's this little exclamation point icon that keeps popping up on my toolbar. It says "click this balloon to download important blah blah blah".. I can't tell if this is something legitimate or just another virus.

Join the club

Aw poor Jeff. I feel for ya.

Okay now that I've gotten rid of the viruses, I have a problem: my computer is ridiculously slow. It takes forever for the desktop to load, and internet is crawling like a snail. I'm assuming it's the result of some virus carcasses lying around. What do I do.

Merlock, I do use Firefox, exclusively. I use IE occasionally.. on accident only.

Is that why you haven't been coming for updates on MSN.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Aw poor Jeff. I feel for ya.

Okay now that I've gotten rid of the viruses, I have a problem: my computer is ridiculously slow. It takes forever for the desktop to load, and internet is crawling like a snail. I'm assuming it's the result of some virus carcasses lying around. What do I do.

Merlock, I do use Firefox, exclusively. I use IE occasionally.. on accident only.

Defrag your hard drive and run disk cleanup. If that doesn't take care of your slow comp then you'll probably have to end up doing what I will soon...format the hard drive

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Aw poor Jeff. I feel for ya.

Okay now that I've gotten rid of the viruses, I have a problem: my computer is ridiculously slow. It takes forever for the desktop to load, and internet is crawling like a snail. I'm assuming it's the result of some virus carcasses lying around. What do I do.

Merlock, I do use Firefox, exclusively. I use IE occasionally.. on accident only.

Did you do a scan with either the Spybot S&D that Ynot posted, or the free version of Ad-aware? Here's the download link for the free-ware version of Ad-Aware if you still need it.

http://www.download.com/part=dl-ad-a...5&pid=10747652

Alright, after doing what Jeff suggested, I would personally recommend doing a scan with a program called CCleaner. It's an amazing free program that will fix any problems in your registries and clear out any unnecessary leftover fragments of programs or files that no longer exist, so it should wipe out the tail viruses of the virus if there's any remnants of them left on the computer. Sometimes you might actually have a few whole gigabytes of useless old program files and not even know it, which could slow your computer down as well. Here's a link to the program should you choose to give it a try.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

my computer is ridiculously slow. It takes forever for the desktop to load

Good way to get the desktop to load quicker:

go to the start menu and click run. Type in "msconfig". You'll get this window, or the equivalent in your version of Windows:



Go to the last tab, titled "Startup":



This is basically all the programs that automatically start when you start you're computer. If you're like me, you'll have quite a few that you really don't need. If you see ones that you obviously don't need, uncheck the box. For instance, here, I could uncheck "mcupdate", since I don't use that program any more.