Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
A couple of days ago, my computer stared getting all these Chinese (I think) sites popping up randomly. Soon after, my toolbar has a little message thing pop-up telling me my computer's infected with a virus and it'll now download the latest virus killer. I think fair enough, i have after all just had these sites pop up, I probably have a virus.
It downloads a programme called BraveSentry. Now I don't know what it was which made me suspicious of this, but somehow it didn't seem legit. Lo and behold, I look it up and it's a programme which reports supposed threats which don't actually exist to try and tempt you into buying the full version.
So I look up how to remove it and follow some online instructions (I forget where). It seemed to work, I stopped getting the annoying toolbar message telling me my computer was infected and I couldn't find any BraveSentry stuff anywhere.
Now maybe I did get rid of BraveSentry. When looking up how to remove it one site warned that it was unusual to only download BraveSentry when your PC's attacked. Whether I got rid of it or not, something's making my PC go wrong still.
So I get a crapload of free anti-virus programmes and run them all (in safe mode and normal). AVG (which I had anyway), Spyware Blaster, Ad-Aware, Spybot, cwshredder, Avast...I run them all. They seem to find quite a lot of things, so I heal or quarantine or delete them or whatever.
Didn't help. I'm still getting the Chinese pop ups (though now the sites won't load, I just see it trying to get to some random address and failing. In fact, I can't load anything in IE). My PC's resources are, apparently, always right around the limit as frequently if I open a browser and My Computer and winamp at once, it won't let me open anything else. At first it wouldn't let me do ctrl alt delete, saying the administrator had blocked that, so I looked up a way to fix it and I could do it through the Run... command thing. Now though, when I press ctrl alt delete, nothing happens at all, it doesn't even tell me the admin thing. I try to do the Run... thing again, and when I click on Run... it asks me if I want to create a shortcut for it on the desktop! I can't get to the Control Panel either. A few hours ago I was listening to music on winamp and the PC hasn't been off since, but now it says something like this when I try and play something: Bad DirectSound driver error code 80070057 (which I looked up, and found people asking but very little help). It won't play sound in youtube either, though it doesn't come up with an error code.
Oh yeah, AVG has been popping up frequently telling me I have this trojan here and this virus there. Now I don't know what the hell these things are, it doesn't come up saying "My Computer" and I think "ooh I shouldn't quarantine that", it says things like system32/dilu (that's completely made up from a vague memory, it hasn't done it for a couple of hours), so for all I know there's a virus on my system making AVG think perfectly harmless files are trojans and all this stuff is going wrong because I've been quarantining things I need. Or maybe they are all trojans.
Anyway, finally I gave up and decided I'd just have to reformat my hard drive. Problem is, I didn't install XP on this machine in the first place, my dad did it ages ago. So I don't know where the disk is, and haven't been able to ask him yet. I can't imagine he'd have thrown it away, but I went through all the CDs I could find and it wasn't there...even though I found boot up disks for older versions of windows so I'd have thought they'd be in the same place.
I don't know what to do if he doesn't know where it is. I didn't really want to have to buy another version, so I'm hoping you guys will be able to help me clean my PC without having to reformat. If anyone can give me a step by step guide which tries everything, and if that doesn't work I'll know I'll just have to buy XP again, I'd be grateful.
EDIT: Oh yeah, if you're linking to virus scanners and things, can you make sure they're free? If I can't fix it without paying for some scanner which might not even work, I'll just get XP again instead.
It downloads a programme called BraveSentry. Now I don't know what it was which made me suspicious of this, but somehow it didn't seem legit. Lo and behold, I look it up and it's a programme which reports supposed threats which don't actually exist to try and tempt you into buying the full version.
So I look up how to remove it and follow some online instructions (I forget where). It seemed to work, I stopped getting the annoying toolbar message telling me my computer was infected and I couldn't find any BraveSentry stuff anywhere.
Now maybe I did get rid of BraveSentry. When looking up how to remove it one site warned that it was unusual to only download BraveSentry when your PC's attacked. Whether I got rid of it or not, something's making my PC go wrong still.
So I get a crapload of free anti-virus programmes and run them all (in safe mode and normal). AVG (which I had anyway), Spyware Blaster, Ad-Aware, Spybot, cwshredder, Avast...I run them all. They seem to find quite a lot of things, so I heal or quarantine or delete them or whatever.
Didn't help. I'm still getting the Chinese pop ups (though now the sites won't load, I just see it trying to get to some random address and failing. In fact, I can't load anything in IE). My PC's resources are, apparently, always right around the limit as frequently if I open a browser and My Computer and winamp at once, it won't let me open anything else. At first it wouldn't let me do ctrl alt delete, saying the administrator had blocked that, so I looked up a way to fix it and I could do it through the Run... command thing. Now though, when I press ctrl alt delete, nothing happens at all, it doesn't even tell me the admin thing. I try to do the Run... thing again, and when I click on Run... it asks me if I want to create a shortcut for it on the desktop! I can't get to the Control Panel either. A few hours ago I was listening to music on winamp and the PC hasn't been off since, but now it says something like this when I try and play something: Bad DirectSound driver error code 80070057 (which I looked up, and found people asking but very little help). It won't play sound in youtube either, though it doesn't come up with an error code.
Oh yeah, AVG has been popping up frequently telling me I have this trojan here and this virus there. Now I don't know what the hell these things are, it doesn't come up saying "My Computer" and I think "ooh I shouldn't quarantine that", it says things like system32/dilu (that's completely made up from a vague memory, it hasn't done it for a couple of hours), so for all I know there's a virus on my system making AVG think perfectly harmless files are trojans and all this stuff is going wrong because I've been quarantining things I need. Or maybe they are all trojans.
Anyway, finally I gave up and decided I'd just have to reformat my hard drive. Problem is, I didn't install XP on this machine in the first place, my dad did it ages ago. So I don't know where the disk is, and haven't been able to ask him yet. I can't imagine he'd have thrown it away, but I went through all the CDs I could find and it wasn't there...even though I found boot up disks for older versions of windows so I'd have thought they'd be in the same place.
I don't know what to do if he doesn't know where it is. I didn't really want to have to buy another version, so I'm hoping you guys will be able to help me clean my PC without having to reformat. If anyone can give me a step by step guide which tries everything, and if that doesn't work I'll know I'll just have to buy XP again, I'd be grateful.
EDIT: Oh yeah, if you're linking to virus scanners and things, can you make sure they're free? If I can't fix it without paying for some scanner which might not even work, I'll just get XP again instead.
