Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Computer virus advice

Lori left a comment on my previous entry which exactly describes what happened to my sister-in-law:

"Nope, you are very right. It took out the components of my anti-virus, wiped out most of my computer's devices, took out my printer drivers and my audio drivers. I had to wipe and re-format. I am being very careful right now. A note to your readers: it is probably something called Antivirus 2009, which IS actually a virus itself, and it can come from a lot of different sites. I've had it pop up three times since getting my computer back. If you shut down and do a scan as soon as it pops up you can catch it before it gets a hold of your hard drive."

The popup appears to be a warning your antivirus, but in reality it IS the virus. My sister-in-law took her computer to have it fixed, but it still isn't right.

I was looking for lyrics to some song when I got the popup, but something didn't seem right. When I tried to click out of the page, I couldn't! Thank goodness I did ctrl-alt-del and was able to get rid of the page that way.


Now you need to understand: I was not downloading music. I was simply surfing, looking up the words to a song so I could sing it, when this happened. That's what happened to my sister-in-law too. I'm sure there are other sites with the virus, but the lyric site is where Faye and I ran into it.

11 comments:

  1. It scares me to death that I might get a virus and wipe out everything I have on my computer. I back up my pictures on a Maxtor drive so that I won't lose those even if my computer crashes. Thanks for the warning!

    Sadie is such a good dog! My grand kids would sure have fun throwing the stick for her!!

    Loved your poem. The coyotes were out here a couple nights ago. The cats woke me up and they were staring out the windows. Then I heard the howling. Kind of spooky sounding.

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  2. I got a similar virus not too long ago, had to manually remove it. Not fun.

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  3. I wouldn't even know how to fix it. I'd have to take my computer in to my computer fix it man! That could be expensive! Sheesh!

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  4. You can download a free version of Avast at avast.com. The site tries to take you to the one they charge for, but keep looking and you will find the free version. Once set up it scans all incoming files in the back ground and doesn't effect speed.

    I know of many IT people who use this program in their company.

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  5. I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this to you in previous comments.. but here it is again if they did. I had this happened to me a couple of times...just this past weekend in fact. I have had good luck getting rid of it by just going back and restoring my computer to a previous date before the infection happened. This is a simple procedure. Just go to your start menu and click on "help". Search for "Restore Point". You will get quite a few topics. I found instructions under "What is System Restore". You might also be able to access this thru Control Panel, "System".

    I believe it is better to restore without having to go into "safe" mode, because you can "undo" the restore if you want to. However, if the computer is totally locked up, the safe mode may be your only way to go. Just be sure you use a date prior to the date the problem started.

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  6. Thanks for the update! Its good to know these things too many valuable pictures on here!

    Janis

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  7. Guy, I always used AVG until a couple of weeks ago. I took my computer in for a little "tune-up", and the tech there said people have had some problems with AVG not agreeing with their computers. He installed Avast, the free version. So that's what I have now.

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  8. I sure won't be visiting any music sites in the future. Thanks for all the tips.

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  9. Thanks for the heads up - Take care,
    Katie

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  10. Ugggh. I am so sick of all these virus things! My computer has made a nice collection of them and I imagine it's going to slowly eat it alive.

    At least I have an idea of what one looks like now.

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  11. I will never surf blogger again by going to next blog. My virus ware stopped 7 virus on the 9th, a Friday night. Popped up like that while looking at journals. Be careful. I did not click on my warnings because it was gone before I could click on it. That must be why virus ware said ignored... I ignored it so it was blocked. Thanks for warning, now I know what it was. Daughter got a virus looking for gospel songs. On most of the ones she clicked on. She was going to download them for me. Have a good week. Blessings, Janie

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