Hijacking virus

[witzend]

Well, there's a first time for everything, I guess. I finally ended up with a computer virus. It hijacks my search engine and generally lets me only go to sites where I can buy whatever it is I searched for. So, if I searched for Red Skelton, it would take me to a site that sells Red Skelton paintings.

Also, my computer can not go to any anti-virus or spyware sites. Not even Microsoft downloads. The browser just plain shuts down. So, husband has been hogging my computer all day, trying to fix it. He is going to bring home a USB dvd burner tomorrow for me to burn all of my files onto DVD discs, and then wipe my computer. I need my computer for work!

If any of you have had this problem before, can you please let me know what it was and how you fixed it? I will be using husband's computer while he is using mine, but he won't be giving it up easily, and I don't want to hang out in his computer room all day.

 

[susiestar]

I don't have a clue as to how to fix it, but I am sending "computer be healed" vibes!

I absolutely HATE things ike this and feel whoever creates them should be thrown in jail. Yup. I truly do as viruses cause so many problems and interfere with peoples lives for huge amounts of time.

Anyway, I am glad you can at least use your husband's computer. If he has a "sticky note" program you could leave a little thank you or love note. (My husband has a program that lets him put little notes on the desktop that look like post it notes)

 

[witzend]

If I weren't afraid of downloading new programs to his computer, I'd probably download the "sticky note" one! I'm glad that I'm savvy enough to have realized that there was something wrong, and to hound husband into doing something about it. He poo-pooed me yesterday about it, and I got really cranky about it. I hope he will get it together soon! I really need it for work and I can't put an infected computer on their network. Unless, of course, they are the ones that infected me!

 

[flutterbee]

If you have an idea when you got this virus, I would try doing a system restore through Windows Control Panel first. Just pick a date prior to when this started. Much easier than wiping it clean and starting over.

 

[timer lady]

Back up ~ nuke & burn. That's all I can say. Once one of those little suckers gets onto your easy child there's little you can do.

I have 2 firewalls & a serious security program between me & the internet & yet just recently had a trojan take my laptop down. I used a portable hard drive to back up my machine; then I reformatted it. Since all my household info is on my laptop & the machine was getting a bit older, husband decided to get me a new laptop & give kt the older one to use for internet use in the kitchen where adults can keep an eye on things.

I ran security on my backed up hard drive before I installed the files on my new hard drive.

Good luck - I hate this kind of destruction. It's so useless.

 

[Andy]

What can you buy if you search for this board? I have a kid or two for rent. (The easy child one is never home and the difficult child one likes to cook).

 

[Hound dog]

This is why I have an external hard drive. Seriously. They aren't expensive. But they are great for backing up files in case of viruses. I rarely get them, but when I do I'm livid until Travis fixes it. I have him wipe the computer clean and reload windows. Why? Cuz with many of these wonderful viruses they manage to currorupt everything.

Sending hugs and good vibes.

 

[witzend]

So, after Mr. Expert sat with my computer yesterday for 11 hours, trying and retrying things over and over, he gave it to me about 11 PM and said "It's pretty much fixed. You can do a search on Google, but you still can't go to Norton and get a live update, or go to Microsoft Security and get an update, and nothing shows on the spybot virus scan. I'll ask the guy at work who does the security tomorrow if he knows anything about this, and bring home a DVD burner tomorrow so you can save your I-tunes."

So I sat with it for about 5 minutes and tried those things with him over my shoulder. They didn't work, so I did a google search on "computer virus blocks norton" and found several forums with people talking about that happening and what they did to fix it. He says "Let me see that." I got up this morning and he had run a Malware scan that located 5 trojans and two other viruses. I deleted them, updated Norton anti-virus and Microsoft security, and ran a second Malware scan which came up clean. I called him up and asked him where he got that idea from. Apparently from my google search...

Why use a hammer when you can use a thumb tack? Because, you're a man.

 

[klmno]

I took mine into a guy who backed up my files, "cleansed" my easy child, and reloaded everything in about 1 1/2 day for about $125. It was worth it. If it's spyware or something that hasn't gotten into your hard drive registry (I think that's what it's called), I believe the anti-virus software can get rid of it. But once it's in the heart of things, I found it quicker and easier to take it to someone. You probably got it through spyware, or an email.

OOps- I jsut realized that you got it under control already!! Good for you!!

 

[Hound dog]

Glad you got rid of it.

Had to LOL over the google search coming up with the answers.

 

[mom_in_training]

Aside from the Trogans infecting your computer, Using Norton is the biggest problem. Just helped my sister clean out her computer yesterday for the same thing. She could not get online or anything but I walked her through it. There are two programs that I use (Primarily Kaspersky) Kaspersky or nod32. But never together (To many conflicts if you do) Anyway, I will do the 30 day trials from their web-sites to aid in cleaning out an infected computer. Norton is behind the times as far as being up to date. The updates for example that Kaspersky has this week might be the same updates that Norton does the following week. They are not really focused on the quality of their program anymore and have not been in a long time. My sister dumped her Norton yesterday and went with Kaspersky.

Her system was supposed to be protected with the newer Norton program that she had running but ummmmmm it did not stop that bad boy trojan. Another good program is Malwarebytes. You can get a free download from their site as well. Just don't use the Anti-Virus and the Malwarebytes program at the same time regardless of whatever program you choose to stay with or go to. It can create conflict and bog things down. I do not clean out computers for a living or anything but do so quite a bit because I like a good challenge.

 

[witzend]

This virus came back after I had first written it was taken care of. It was buried pretty deep. It was called Backdoor.Tidserv!inf. I had to remove that, then also remove all of my temporary files. It took hours. But you guessed it. I was the one who found it and fixed it. husband helped a lot though, after I found the real root cause.