Whoops. Double clicked on an exe file which was masquerading as a keygen and now my laptop is up to no good.
I could hear the tell-tale "click" noise of Internet Explorer as well as the bleep IE makes when it is blocking something, but IE doesn't actually appear. God knows what its sending out of my machine. I can end the process of the browser in the task manager but it starts up relentlessly. I've tried disabling the browser as I use firefox but it doesn't stick.
Norton AV detected and cleaned 8 trojan horses and I did a system restore to an earlier point.
Alas the clicking continues so I've cut the laptop adrift til you tell me what to do next.
This PC is (legal) XP home with only a recovery disc, laptop is a (not legal) XP Pro and I've lost the disc, or lent it away.
I now find myself downloading 2.5Gb worth of "Windows Vista Ultimatte, Home Basic Home Premium" from a torrent site, although it will probably end up being donkey porn.
The only disc I've got floating about is Windows Media Edition 2005, and I don't think I want that, do I?
Is there a way to fix this problem without wiping?
Computer advice needed
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Gavin Scott
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I'd burn all my most important documents to CD and once I'm absolutely sure that there's nothing left on the laptop that I can't live without, I'd reformat the whole thing.
On a side note, my laptop is making louder noises. When opening and closing documents etc., the cooling fan will start up (that's normal) but just before it spins into action, it makes a slight grating sound - almost as if there is sand in the fan. It only lasts a couple of seconds and then the cooling fan is normal.
Do I need a new fan? Bear in mind that my laptop is less than 8 weeks old!
On a side note, my laptop is making louder noises. When opening and closing documents etc., the cooling fan will start up (that's normal) but just before it spins into action, it makes a slight grating sound - almost as if there is sand in the fan. It only lasts a couple of seconds and then the cooling fan is normal.
Do I need a new fan? Bear in mind that my laptop is less than 8 weeks old!
Gavin,
Which antivirus software do you use? Download a trial of Windows Live OneCare (http://www.microsoft.com/onecare) and let that do a complete scan of your system and see what it finds. You may need to deinstall your previous AV software.
Or, as Jamez suggested you can back up everything onto either CD, DVD or USB Flashdrive and then reinstall Windows and everything else that you have (ie Office, Firefox, Opera etc). If you need any help email me - [email protected] - and I will give you all the help you need.
Now, Jamez, the fan could be making that strange crunching noise as it's going round for a number of reasons. I use a pretty decent Sony Vaio (sic?) laptop and that did it after about eight weeks. I phones Sony and they said the following:
"The fans are positioned within the laptop in order to gain the highest level of air to cool core components. Every now and then the fan will suck in or blow out a large perportion of dust which can get itself lodged in the fan mechanics. The best way to get rid of this is to use a small PC fan cleaner. These are small cans of air which 'blast' away any dust. You can buy these at most PC shops."
The other thing it may be is that the fan needs oiling. My Averatec needed this the other week but it's tricky to do. You could always phone the company that made your laptop and ask for it to be looked at under warranty?
Which antivirus software do you use? Download a trial of Windows Live OneCare (http://www.microsoft.com/onecare) and let that do a complete scan of your system and see what it finds. You may need to deinstall your previous AV software.
Or, as Jamez suggested you can back up everything onto either CD, DVD or USB Flashdrive and then reinstall Windows and everything else that you have (ie Office, Firefox, Opera etc). If you need any help email me - [email protected] - and I will give you all the help you need.
Now, Jamez, the fan could be making that strange crunching noise as it's going round for a number of reasons. I use a pretty decent Sony Vaio (sic?) laptop and that did it after about eight weeks. I phones Sony and they said the following:
"The fans are positioned within the laptop in order to gain the highest level of air to cool core components. Every now and then the fan will suck in or blow out a large perportion of dust which can get itself lodged in the fan mechanics. The best way to get rid of this is to use a small PC fan cleaner. These are small cans of air which 'blast' away any dust. You can buy these at most PC shops."
The other thing it may be is that the fan needs oiling. My Averatec needed this the other week but it's tricky to do. You could always phone the company that made your laptop and ask for it to be looked at under warranty?
I don't want some Hewlett Packard geek mooching though my private documents.steddenm wrote:
The other thing it may be is that the fan needs oiling. My Averatec needed this the other week but it's tricky to do. You could always phone the company that made your laptop and ask for it to be looked at under warranty?
I'll get a can of air blaster stuff and see if that does the trick. The only reason I've mentioned it is that I had the laptop in the studio with me on Friday and the fan kicked in - it wasn't audible on the recording, but it annoyed me slightly.
PLANK, you should know better!Gavin Scott wrote:Whoops. Double clicked on an exe file which was masquerading as a keygen and now my laptop is up to no good.
I had this once, the program actually freezes the frame on the monitor, so you believe you can't do anything, I got around it after several days because I accidentally clicked with the mouse on the top window bar and moved it - everything was running fine behind it.Gavin Scott wrote:I could hear the tell-tale "click" noise of Internet Explorer as well as the bleep IE makes when it is blocking something, but IE doesn't actually appear..
That should've solved it, it's worrying how deep it's got into your BIOS.Gavin Scott wrote:I did a system restore to an earlier point.
And your objection to Donkey Porn is....?Gavin Scott wrote:...although it will probably end up being donkey porn.
No, that's always my last resort for my old PCs - to go back to WinME as it's a very stable program, but then they don't connect to a wireless network. Handy if you have all your personal stuff on another drive though and just want an operating system to move things to CD.Gavin Scott wrote:The only disc I've got floating about is Windows Media Edition 2005, and I don't think I want that, do I?
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Gavin Scott
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No it's fucked. Properly fucked.
The Windows Live Onecare thing is a boon, so thanks Ste. Both versions of my Norton were prompting me to pay to renew and I hadn't got round to replacing them.
Onecare identified the trojan and quarantined it successfully (sic), but I checked the "view a full report" where it announced the quarantine had failed.
I knew that anyway as I was fighting past internet explorer pages popping up telling me to go to a US site and pay $29.95 to clean my machine.
Cunts.
I have no data on the laptop save my msn convos and received files. Hopefully they will be ok to transfer via disc. The rest is on the pc which has got the all-clear. The network is unplugged now, needless to say.
So, who reckons the vista download will be worth a look?
The Windows Live Onecare thing is a boon, so thanks Ste. Both versions of my Norton were prompting me to pay to renew and I hadn't got round to replacing them.
Onecare identified the trojan and quarantined it successfully (sic), but I checked the "view a full report" where it announced the quarantine had failed.
I knew that anyway as I was fighting past internet explorer pages popping up telling me to go to a US site and pay $29.95 to clean my machine.
Cunts.
I have no data on the laptop save my msn convos and received files. Hopefully they will be ok to transfer via disc. The rest is on the pc which has got the all-clear. The network is unplugged now, needless to say.
So, who reckons the vista download will be worth a look?
Give it try. Is it the full version? You can afford it anyway - and then send me a disk so I can have the proper VISTA instead of this "bells and whistles" one I got for free! hehe!Gavin Scott wrote:So, who reckons the vista download will be worth a look?
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Gavin Scott
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Hold the phone...
Onecare seems to have picked up the trojan on a second sweep. This time it seems to be quarantined. That said I've just had a notification that I'm still "working offline" so I suspect IE was trying to launch.
One negative thing about Onecare - it announced that the firewall had recognised Internet Explorer and was giving it permission to go online. If I had the option of overriding that rule I might beo able to slow this down.
Onecare seems to have picked up the trojan on a second sweep. This time it seems to be quarantined. That said I've just had a notification that I'm still "working offline" so I suspect IE was trying to launch.
One negative thing about Onecare - it announced that the firewall had recognised Internet Explorer and was giving it permission to go online. If I had the option of overriding that rule I might beo able to slow this down.
Run hijack this (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/prog ... hijackthis)
On it and post the results, we/I can tell you what the baddies are and what to delete to stop the problem. I did a very similar thing to yourself a few months back, but recovered the PC fine, infact I'm still running the same XP install.
On it and post the results, we/I can tell you what the baddies are and what to delete to stop the problem. I did a very similar thing to yourself a few months back, but recovered the PC fine, infact I'm still running the same XP install.
