My computer's infected...need advice

[bryanbrown]

I was at my mom's last weekend, and used her internet. Now I'm getting tons of pop ups, and my computer is trying to send out emails constantly, not to mention running really slow. I bought trend micro antivirus/spyware, and did the scan, but I'm still getting the random popups. Anybody had this problem? Can it be fixed? thanks in advance

[Blue01F250]

Shoot - once we got pop-ups and who knows on our desktop, we just formatted/reinstalled. Was amazing. We were getting pissed @ our ISP - turned out that as soon as we started the format of the desktop, all of a sudden our laptop was clicking off internet pages left and right...

I had checked the bandwidth usage before and it seemed high, but had nothign to compare it to -- I checked it again and it was almost zero!!!!!! Apparently something was hogging it all up... well that was fixed with the format

[dercody]

welcome to windows!!!

[strokin_early_99]

If the pop-ups are bringing up the same site(s), try googling for the site name(s). Chances are your computer has been hijacked and you will need technical help getting it cleaned up. There are several good geek forums that have help me in the past. Can't remember the names of the sites right off, but if they have

Strokin's Wife

[willypscustoms]

you could be a victim of spamming thats where a spammer uses you computer to send out emails.

[Dave]

This should take care of you Go to the links below download each piece of software and run it

Welcome To Gur.in Your Complete Windows Troubleshooting Guide

go to the downloads section and download Ccleaner and run it
After that Go to the antispyware section and download webroot spy sweeper.

That should get you fixed up.
These are all free downloads, The Spy sweeper is only a 90 day trial though but it does work great

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Last edited by Dave : 08-08-2007 at 03:46 AM. Reason: fixed link

[rankroddin250]

our computer @ work got all screwy and i ran a virus scan and found 23 of them... i ran a spy ware scan and found 986 spy ware attachments... when i deleated them all it like fried the software on the computer and it had to be taken into a computer doc... the best defense is to run the scans regularly so you dont get bad nasty stuff adding up plus it alows you to remove the nasties B4 they have allot of time to really hurt your computer

[Rodslinger]

Sounds like spyware, or since it's trying to send out e-mails a virus. Download Microsoft Defender (I think it's still called that - its free) or another anti-spyware program as well as either Norton or Symantec virus scan. Be sure the revision and .dat files are up to date on 'em and scan the entire machine. Hopefully you don't have anything too nasty that those programs can't get rid of.

[robertcarmel]

All of the advice is correct so far! I agree with Rodslingers choices of software. If you cannot afford Symantec however Avast is a good free Antivirus. You can find it at avast! antivirus software - computer virus, worm and Trojan protection by ALWIL Software. If you can do it yourself, I would always advise a system restore, IF you know how to save all of your data, and THEN start over with the correct software as a proactive move, rather than a reactive one. IF you decide to restore the system, and do all of the updates to Windows, and install all of the software you want on the machine, and have restrored all of your data, but BEFORE you go anywhere else on the internet (except MS UPDATES) you should make a clone copy of your machine with something like Symantec Ghost, Burn it to DVD or CD so that you have a good restore poin in the future. Hope this helps.

[vitalidle]

Another good free spyware remover is Ad-Aware from lavasoft. I like it and it seems to work as advertised. Once you download your program of choice you need to run it at least a couple times a week you would be surprised how much of that stuff is on the puter.