iq160plus
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2004
- Posts
- 295
- Likes
- 11
LONG BORING STORY to follow....Save yor time and go away..
Laptop Hardrive (30 GiG) failure this weekend. I feel that age had a little to do with it, but one day I came home and hard drive buzzing away, numerous internet explorer windows open.....VIRUS....
I had 103 processes running in task manager...I usually have 29-35 max! I spend literally all SUNDAY trying to eliminate all the spyware, malware, and viruses...It was impossible.
I ran updated versions of McAfee Virus 9.0, Ad-Aware Pro 6 with latest build 1.81 i think, Spyware Doctor (highly rated at downloads.com) and Search and Destroy. I thought these were good. Here's the kicker...
I ran them all, with full and deep searches, for lack of better term. Sure, even though up till the previous Friday I was clean.. Now their were about 300 items found by McAfee, hundreds by S&D, and I remember about 1700 by Ad-Aware, then about 250 things from Spyware doctor. THEN....
I rebooted to SAFE-MODE (Win2k) and re-ran all of them again. Everytime I ran them they would all find 6-200 items of trash. I had to run them at least 5 times each at a considerable time. I turned off my cable-modem in between and I would still have about 3-6 unusual processes running in Task Manager. When I would manually stop a process, it would immediately be replaced by another one, under a different name. It was crazy....this lasted for about 10 hrs. I was ticked. I went into the registry, and deleted hundreds of items. I un-installed about 10 things under Control Panel/Add Remove Software.... I was up to date on ALL IE and Win2k programs. I gave up. I put in a NEW hard-drive, and started a new install of Win2K.
It's not like me to give up, but after fighting that long, I figured that I was finally paying my dues from P2P files!
But, no, its not that easy....Here, a NEW, freshly formatted hard-drive. The only thing installed was Windows 2000 Server. I wanted to install Service Pack first of all, so I turned on the Cable Modem. I swear that I had not even typed in www.microsoft.com when I got my first Junk Message. So I went to Services and killed Messenger Service. My version of IE included with Win2K had HOME PAGE as www.msn.com defaulted.
By the time I fixed the Messenger Service Problem (20 seconds, maybe) Internet Explorer had already started pop-ups and installed a version of the ISTSearchbar and was popping up already!! This world is crazy. I am not a violent person, but i sware I would punch a spammer ( or a 'legalized' spammer under the name of "targeted advertiser") right in the face.
I am convinced that I need something other than IE. I hate changes, but this was all too much.
I am glad to say that the only thing I lost was default settings on MS Office software, and my FAVORITES in IE! All documents restored ( I have thousands) and all databases recovered (I have at least 50)!
An I was able to get old hard-drive working through USB to get my outlook backup.pst back!! No thanks to Microsoft, who i don't normally rag on, but come on....Spyware and pop-ups on a FRESH system after going to www.msn.com.
I trust you 'guys' at head-fi! I will be searching the forums for browser suggestions.
MORAL of the story: backup, backup, backup.
Laptop Hardrive (30 GiG) failure this weekend. I feel that age had a little to do with it, but one day I came home and hard drive buzzing away, numerous internet explorer windows open.....VIRUS....
I had 103 processes running in task manager...I usually have 29-35 max! I spend literally all SUNDAY trying to eliminate all the spyware, malware, and viruses...It was impossible.
I ran updated versions of McAfee Virus 9.0, Ad-Aware Pro 6 with latest build 1.81 i think, Spyware Doctor (highly rated at downloads.com) and Search and Destroy. I thought these were good. Here's the kicker...
I ran them all, with full and deep searches, for lack of better term. Sure, even though up till the previous Friday I was clean.. Now their were about 300 items found by McAfee, hundreds by S&D, and I remember about 1700 by Ad-Aware, then about 250 things from Spyware doctor. THEN....
I rebooted to SAFE-MODE (Win2k) and re-ran all of them again. Everytime I ran them they would all find 6-200 items of trash. I had to run them at least 5 times each at a considerable time. I turned off my cable-modem in between and I would still have about 3-6 unusual processes running in Task Manager. When I would manually stop a process, it would immediately be replaced by another one, under a different name. It was crazy....this lasted for about 10 hrs. I was ticked. I went into the registry, and deleted hundreds of items. I un-installed about 10 things under Control Panel/Add Remove Software.... I was up to date on ALL IE and Win2k programs. I gave up. I put in a NEW hard-drive, and started a new install of Win2K.
It's not like me to give up, but after fighting that long, I figured that I was finally paying my dues from P2P files!
But, no, its not that easy....Here, a NEW, freshly formatted hard-drive. The only thing installed was Windows 2000 Server. I wanted to install Service Pack first of all, so I turned on the Cable Modem. I swear that I had not even typed in www.microsoft.com when I got my first Junk Message. So I went to Services and killed Messenger Service. My version of IE included with Win2K had HOME PAGE as www.msn.com defaulted.
By the time I fixed the Messenger Service Problem (20 seconds, maybe) Internet Explorer had already started pop-ups and installed a version of the ISTSearchbar and was popping up already!! This world is crazy. I am not a violent person, but i sware I would punch a spammer ( or a 'legalized' spammer under the name of "targeted advertiser") right in the face.
I am convinced that I need something other than IE. I hate changes, but this was all too much.
I am glad to say that the only thing I lost was default settings on MS Office software, and my FAVORITES in IE! All documents restored ( I have thousands) and all databases recovered (I have at least 50)!
An I was able to get old hard-drive working through USB to get my outlook backup.pst back!! No thanks to Microsoft, who i don't normally rag on, but come on....Spyware and pop-ups on a FRESH system after going to www.msn.com.
I trust you 'guys' at head-fi! I will be searching the forums for browser suggestions.
MORAL of the story: backup, backup, backup.
