Virus Help!!

[Aeneis2009]

OMFG PLEASE HELP, I CANNOT PLAY WAR......I got the Troj_FAKEAV.CX virus last night. Early symptoms are random fake antivirus pop ups completely random, sometimes they look like my AV sometimes they dont, and pop ups from the menu suggesting Antivirus update. Trend Micro was unable to locate it. I restarted my computer in safemode and searched the web. I found on one forum a step by step method of destroying it for windows XP, but not VISTA. I tried it, it involved going into the regestry and deleting stuff, I have no idea if i was deleting the right stuff b/c I couldnt find exactly what the thing said i was supposed to find. Whats the registry for anyway?? Restarted the PC, virus may or may not be gone, but in regular mode it does nothing but think. Think think think. I cannot select anything, It just loggs into windows and thinks. So I restarted again in safemode, and after an hour or so I found on a forum that Spyhunter is one of the only AV programs that currently can find the morphing version of the virus, I installed it and it located the virus as well as several other spyware/malware things and different versions of the original virus. I then deleted them and cleaned it. Ran trend micro in safemode, now it works, it wasnt before (I assume b/c of the virus), didnt find a thing. I'm good now right? restart pc, prepare to play warhammer, and the PC is still stuck in think mode. Can someone tell me what to do? Im assuming somehow I f**ed up the registry, i didnt realize it was that important, Im a pc noob. Help please!!

[Sarekonna]

I wish I could help but I do know it probably has something to do with what you did to the registry. Very important, very scary file you should never mess with unless you know exactly what you are doing. I know that's all good hind-sight.

Anyways I feel confident that as our friends start getting home from work, one of them will be able to help you.

[Aeneis2009]

also it appears to have hijacked my search engine in mozilla. it is now whatissearch or some other random most likely fake search engine.

[Tiplon]

Hi mate. Like melly said, that is a no,no. I don't think all is lost though. You may want to try and restore off of a safe backup. It may not be too bad if you have made a backup lately. If you are not sure on what to do here, do a search on restore vista or something and I am sure you will find step by step instructions on what to do.

Hope that is helpful

[Braynon]

OUCH!

Ok... Aeneis... this is going to sound really really scary if you've never done it, but the ugly-but-surefire way to fix a broken registry and a virus... is to bite the bullet, reformat, and reinstall the OS. Unless you have backups that you can restore your machine from. The trouble is that you lose a good couple of hours, and any data that you do not have backups of.

If you want to go this route... I can help you. I don't know Vista well enough to try and help you debug the problem, but if you need someone to walk you through a reinstall, I can do that. If nobody else has any better ideas, let me know and we'll do this. Meanwhile, get into safe mode, and start burning copies of files that you can not bear to lose; like photos, music... that sort of stuff.

[Sarsin]

Well, the registry is the brains of Windows. Deleting things in there can be bad Voodoo. It sounds like you might have got it, but I can give you some suggestions of things that help avoiding these kind of things from happening.

Anti-Spyware
Run two; one will a lot of times not be enough to catch everything.
- Windows Defender: Free if you own Windows. Not too shabby
- Spybot Search and Destroy: The go-to Spyware remover. Also free, so no reason not to have it.

Anti-Virus
There are lots of free options that are alright, but you really do get what you pay for
- AVG: Not too bad of an AV; doesn't do a whole lot but that unless you buy it
- Avast!: Another freebie, I use this on a lot of computers that I trust to be safer. I have it on my wife's computer, but I have a hell of a lot more defense in front of it.
- Eset Nod32: This is a bad-ass anti-virus. Only takes 10M of RAM or less to run (compared to Norton's whopping 50+) and has a 90% capture rate on new critters it hasn't seen before. Not to bore you with details, but Nod can do pattern matches, as well as monitoring for "virus-like" behavior to catch things it doesn't know. Not trying to sound like an ad or anything, but I happen to like this one. Only costs $40 too, and it has a free 30 day trial.

Firewall
Windows firewall sucks. I cannot state this enough. If your computer is hooked directly to the Internet (i.e. the cable modem/DSL goes directly to your computer not to something that dishes it out to your home network like a WiFi) you absolutely need to have a firewall. As a matter of fact, if you are doing that I would still recommend you get a hardware firewall to have something else on the front line besides your computer.
- Zone Alarm Basic Zone Alarm Basic is not too bad if you need something to keep the baddies out. Once again, freebie.

Go forth with your free products and live evil-free

[Aeneis2009]

damn, I've backed up my files. Im going to reformat now. no more messing with the registry. Hopefully i will be able to be in game by midnight. Braynon, I will bug you if i get stuck. Thanks for the help everyone!

[Braynon]

<nods> Not a problem, mate. I realized that my phone is out of juice at the moment, but I'll plug it in ASAP. Luck to ya!

[Caviel]

Well, the registry is the brains of Windows. Deleting things in there can be bad Voodoo. It sounds like you might have got it, but I can give you some suggestions of things that help avoiding these kind of things from happening.

Anti-Spyware
Run two; one will a lot of times not be enough to catch everything.
- Windows Defender: Free if you own Windows. Not too shabby
- Spybot Search and Destroy: The go-to Spyware remover. Also free, so no reason not to have it.

Anti-Virus
There are lots of free options that are alright, but you really do get what you pay for
- AVG: Not too bad of an AV; doesn't do a whole lot but that unless you buy it
- Avast!: Another freebie, I use this on a lot of computers that I trust to be safer. I have it on my wife's computer, but I have a hell of a lot more defense in front of it.
- Eset Nod32: This is a bad-ass anti-virus. Only takes 10M of RAM or less to run (compared to Norton's whopping 50+) and has a 90% capture rate on new critters it hasn't seen before. Not to bore you with details, but Nod can do pattern matches, as well as monitoring for "virus-like" behavior to catch things it doesn't know. Not trying to sound like an ad or anything, but I happen to like this one. Only costs $40 too, and it has a free 30 day trial.

Firewall
Windows firewall sucks. I cannot state this enough. If your computer is hooked directly to the Internet (i.e. the cable modem/DSL goes directly to your computer not to something that dishes it out to your home network like a WiFi) you absolutely need to have a firewall. As a matter of fact, if you are doing that I would still recommend you get a hardware firewall to have something else on the front line besides your computer.
- Zone Alarm Basic Zone Alarm Basic is not too bad if you need something to keep the baddies out. Once again, freebie.

Go forth with your free products and live evil-free

Spybot isn't so great, I've had better luck with Ad-Aware Free 2008. I would really recommend Kaspersky Internet Security if you want a nice commercial all-in-one solution. It's anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam (Although this component is admittedly weak) plus a replacement software firewall that actually stops OUTBOUND traffic (Unlike the WIndows version) as requested. It will even auto-protect your network interfaces depending on the type. It's commercial ($80 for three installs), although it has a low memory footprint (Anything does compared to Norton) and is top rated by most reviewers comparing competing products.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2326993,00.asp

When you're talking about a virus, the only safe bet is to nuke it from orbit. Wipe, reinstall, then lay down some AV/AS protection first thing.