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"Very odd spyware problem"

Evening all.

I minimised an interent window yesterday and to my horror were 3 or 4 icons that i know are a result due to spyware.

I already had the free versions of zonealarm and AVG anti virus up and running.

When i went to download Spybot to try and remove these icons and whatever else had been put on.. it didnt really work, they remained there and my desktop background turned blue with an error on it.

So this morning i put some valuable stuff on a few floppy disks and re-formatted my pc using the restore discs i got with it.

So here i am i downloaded AVG and Zonealarm again on my 'clean' computer and was just downloading Spybot from download.com when some new icons appear! Theres a casino one, a date one, and a ringtone one. and i keep getting popups which dont usually happen.

I re-formatted less than 9 hours ago and theres trouble already.

How is it possible for these dodgy things to remain on my PC after the big reboot

Any help will be greatly appreciated beofre I try and re-formatt again.

Pandaemonium wrote:
> Cong_Man wrote:
> I've tried various things, including Spybot and nothing seems to
> shift it. As it's a works computer a re-format is out of the
> question. Anyone got any suggestions?
>
> Look for all visual basic scripts on your machine. (.vbx?)
>
> Delete 'em. I had a mate with a porn dialer that nothing could get
> rid of. This was the case.
>
> back them up to a different dir first, although I've had not problems
> just wiping them.

Didn't work. Have just tried Ad-Aware as well. That too failed.

I'm beginning to think it may be a problem with the work servers rather than my workstation.

Cong_Man wrote:
> I've tried various things, including Spybot and nothing seems to
> shift it. As it's a works computer a re-format is out of the
> question. Anyone got any suggestions?

Look for all visual basic scripts on your machine. (.vbx?)

Delete 'em. I had a mate with a porn dialer that nothing could get rid of. This was the case.

back them up to a different dir first, although I've had not problems just wiping them.

I'm having some trouble with Spyware as well...

I picked up Adlogix on my works computer, called the techies, they installed Microsoft Anti-Spyware and edited the registry a bit. It was all fine until I rebooted next morning and it came back.

Not wanting to call the techies again, I searched atround the Internet found the registry entries I needed to get rid of, wiped them out myself, ran the Microsoft check, got rid of it that way again and it came back again.

I've tried various things, including Spybot and nothing seems to shift it. As it's a works computer a re-format is out of the question. Anyone got any suggestions?

I havent reformatted again yet. I installed adaware and it found some malware called 'lop'

And apparenlty its uninstallable. So everytime I perform a quick scan with adaware it finds the 'lop' malware along with a few cookies.

Should I reformat? I wont lose much as I only reformatted the last time only 24 hours ago.

JC941* wrote:
> ooo. now you say that, I am using MSN7 with plus and have got a few
> extra smilies and pictures.
>
>
> The popup ad's have stopped now though.

Running msn 7 should be fine, its just where you download the extras from that usually causes problems - proper places will be fine but some of the free bundles usually found on p2p networks or torrent sites usually have spyware and other stuff bundled in with the smilies etc.

Each time you reformat and reinstall Windows you'll need to perform a Windows Update which will give you a lot of critical patches.

Install MS Antispyware (FREE) which will also help block mal-ware from running.

ooo. now you say that, I am using MSN7 with plus and have got a few extra smilies and pictures.


The popup ad's have stopped now though.

Also watch what you choose to install.

I had to go round and fix a mates computer as his sister had downloaded yahoo chat and some extras for it and also some winks for MSN7.
Turns out the yahoo one was littered with spyware and the winks she downloaded for free of some dodgy site also downloaded a few viruses and spyware.

Thats great cheers.

Im gonna reformat my PC now anyway as these desktop icons wont budge and I wanna just make sure its clean.

Download adaware - www.lavasoft.de there is a free to use version on there.

Also go to the windows update site and click the windows family tab and then the get free security downloads. Get the microsoft anti-spyware.

Also worth getting the google toolbar installed to block pop ups when browsing the web.