Topic: Virus/Tojan Help Please!!!

[JerryM]

Axe,

worth having a look for future - a little programme called gmer. it allows u to get in behind windows and have a look what's going on. u can view the root too.

[Malc.]

Jerry,

Thanks for that, trying to get behind the scenes these days is getting hard work. Bring back DOS. ;D

[JerryM]

Bring back DOS. ;D

for defo for me too.

[commis]

Hi
Dos, my fire programmes were so ease under dos! Happy days.

[George]

Okay, I don't want to count my chickens before they've hatched but, I think I might have cured the problem or rather my brother has.

Axe - I'm pleased to hear it may be sorted. Here's a screen shot from my most  recent problem. Win XP wouldn't even start - not even in safe mode. I used F8 to try and deter Win XP from closing down upon finding an error but it still would not start. The hard drive is suspect. I don't think this was a virus.

[Malc.]

The Blue Screen of Death! Thanks for that Mr Gates.

I lost a hard drive last year, which caused me no end of head aches. That I hope wasn't due to a virus but it was a tough call to to say. I had the drive checked by a 'super geek', I explained that the drive won't boot and that I had tried disconnecting it, reconnecting it, booting from the CD etc. But that it was also intermittent.

He went over to his machine, plugged in my drive and tried to boot it up, it wouldn't. He disconnected it and then reconnected it and tried again, it still didn't. Undeterred by this he then proceeded to boot from CD and try to access the drive, he was unable to do so.He came back to the counter and said "it won't boot, I think it's dead!" :

I then decided to purchase a new hard drive and asked for his advice. He politely agreed and wandered over to a shelf marked storage drives. He pointed to a box and I promptly picked it up. From the now empty shelf I could see that they would normally stock other drives of differing prices and size. I proceeded to ask whether the drive I had in my hand was a good choice, yes sir it is. What are the befits of this drive over this one? I ask pointing to a shelf edge label of a smaller drive but at the same price. He read the box description of the drive I had in my hand that was half a tb and then the label on the smaller drive which was 320gb. He replied 'that ones bigger'! 'which one would you choose?' I ask, 'the one you have in your hand' he replies. I am now curious as my 'super geek' would surely opt for the better quality drive which  presume to be the smaller drive. So I ask 'why is this one better over what would seem to be a smaller but better quality drive?'. He looked at me with a blank expression on his face and simply muttered 'it's the only drive we have left in stock!"

The moral of the story is that just because someone works in the technical services and support department of PC World, wearing their clothes in such a way to suggest that any notion of style or concern for ones appearance is irrelevant in a world where its all about processors and memory, is not necessarily a super geek.

On the upside I now have a Terrabyte of space in my computer. On a cold still night, you can here feint echos from the void that is the nothingness within the new found endless chasm of storage.

[George]

On the upside I now have a Terrabyte of space in my computer. On a cold still night, you can here feint echos from the void that is the nothingness within the new found endless chasm of storage.

I'd only use a 1Tb HDD if I could justify buying a second one as a backup. At present, I'm running Windows XP on a HDD with just 18Gb capacity and that''s only about 60% full. I have loads of programs, too. I always use a separate drive for all my data.

The HDD which caused the blue screen at start-up will still read when fitted as an ancilliary drive. I checked all the boot-up files are still there, so I think it's some kind of advanced Windows issue. It's only of academic interest to identify the problem. As I said, I fitted another drive and was running again within 15 minutes.

[Malc.]

Just realised I got my Mb's Gb's and Tb's mixed up in the post, now edited.

The Terrabyte of storage I have is split between two drives. I only use drive C: for system files everything else, ancillary programs and files, get stored on D:

Sadly my old drive is fried, I can't access it even as a second drive.

[George]

In the absence of any antivirus software running on my PC, I've been using a free bit of Norton software for some time, which is supposed to find anything on your PC but, unless you cough up what it costs, will not remove any virus found. It updates with the latest virus definitions every day, so I trust it's the same as the detection part of a full Norton suite.

And guess what? In about 6 months of running scans it's found NOTHING! Yesterday's scan is typical - the only thing it reports is that I'm not protected!

[Willyeckerslike]

George,

I think it all is a bit of a scam myself all these anti virus products but I have had a few virus's & trojans in my time (All when I had paid for AV's installed).  I have often wondered if Norton, Mcafee etc make these virus's up so we buy there products, who knows :.
As someone said earlier, I think it was Santa, Microsoft security essentials is free and quite good by all accounts.  Now as it is free Microsoft in theory have nothing to gain from making it.  So again why make something for nothing?  is it because there really is very little out there to worry about and the cost is minimal to make a product like this? and it shines a bit of a light on the Microsoft empire?
Anyways,  as its free why not use it?  nothing to lose.
I too reinstall everything every 6 months or so too.

PS, pleased to here you got rid of whatever was on your puter Axe ;D

cheers

Will