Plz Help Me With Virus

[c48g]

i got a trojan downloading a vmware torrent and 3 days before that i rebuilt my pc and i didnt installl virus security quickest wat does anyone reccomend for a good anti virus program atm i will pay up too $500 au for it

[boldfire]

Try Avast or AVG (both free).

[tehboris]

The Windows install disk is the best. VMware server is free, and version 1 has similar functionality to workstation.

[c48g]

so wat do u mean by using the windows install disk

[tehboris]

The Windows install disk can fix any problem, unless it's a hardware problem.

[hak5matt]

More often than not, if a virus has dug it's claws deep into your system, your best bet is to just back up what you can, and reformat your computer with the Windows install disk.

Back when I was troubleshooting issues like virii and malware for clients of mine, I gave them two options.

I can charge you for 2 hours of time to backup your data and reinstall your operating system, or I can charge you for 8+ hours to 'attempt' to completely remove whatever has borked your system.

Sometimes you'd get someone who was stubborn and wanted to pay for the time to try and remove a virus from the machine. Most saw the light and realized that it wasn't worth their money to have me sit and try something that might not even work in the first place.

When you tell someone that there's a damn good chance that you can backup all of the data they've created like word docs and pictures, most are happy to tell you to blow the machine away and start from scratch. Doing that requires that you explain to them however that anything they've downloaded, things like their digital camera software, or games for their kids will need to be reinstalled.

So making an already too long post even longer, back up your stuff, and reformat. It really is the only way to be absolutely sure that you've gotten all traces of the infection gone. And be sure before you move your backup files to the clean computer that you scan them with a reliable virus scanner. I personally recommend Kaspersky, or Sophos. But most certainly go with someone who's reliable and has a reputation on being a top tier provider.

Hope that helps,
Matt

[davmoo]

As someone who has had to remove countless viruses for both clients (government facilities are the worst) and family, and has been doing it since the dawn of computer viruses, I have to agree with Matt. Back up the data as best you can, exclude ALL executables from the backup, reformat the drive (I'm so anal about this that I run dban (http://www.dban.org/) and nuke the drive completely before I reformat it), reinstall Windows and your applications, reinstall your data. Yes, its a major and royal pain in the ass. But its the only way to make sure everything nasty is one hundred percent gone.

Besides, its my opinion that viruses are like roaches in a kitchen...for every one that the virus detection software can find, you've probably got a few more that they can't find.

Finally, I'm not here to preach a sermon, and I'm not going to say I've never done it myself because you all know I'd be lying. But any time you download pirated software from unknown sources you're playing with fire. If nothing else, keep a spare cheap crap computer handy that you can install things on and see if there are any buried nastinesses present before you put it on your real system.

[computoman]

On a different computer download and burn a "trinity rescue kit" cd. reboot the original pc with it and choose the option to do a virus check. Once your system is clean then download and install avast or avg.