Computer Virus Help.......

shawn474

I have a virus on my laptop. It is one that tells me that the computer is infected and to click to disinfect. It pops up balloons everywhere that the program is infected and cannot be opened. I don't honestly know if my anti-virus software was up to date. I have tried to download a fix, but it cancels the download before it can complete. When I connect to the internet it will allow me to do so, but at the first try to change from the home page, it sends me to the Antivirus Pro Software website to purchase new software. I have researched and it is a virus.

Does anyone know a workaround to get this thing off of my computer? Everything I have tried to download as a fix has been aborted.

I am really not very computer literate and this is basically used as word processing, internet surfing and for the kids games. My brother used it for school for a couple of months and just returned it so don't exactly know what happened. It is a Dell Inspiron 1505 if that matters.

Shawn

wutadumsn23

Sounds like you have some spyware/adware running on your computer. I had a very similar problem on mine. Think I used a program called SUPERAntiSpyware, it's free and pretty sure it solved my problem. We have some good computer guys on here that can probably help you better, but in the meantime, this may work.

-Jeff

http://www.superantispyware.com/?tag=GOOGLE-SUPERANTISPYWARE

heiney9

That is a REAL PITA virus. Myself and a friend both got that type and we both had to have our HD completely wiped and reloaded. My brother works in I.T. and he wasn't able to fix or get rid of the virus completely. A friend had it even worse than me on her laptop and even a professional IT company couldn't clean it. Ultimately she had to have the entire drive wiped and start over.

I know, not what you want to hear.............but that is a nasty virus and the more you use your computer and click on stuff to get rid of it, the worse it seems to get.

GL

H9

P.s. Windows restore won;t work in regular or safe mode. First thing I'd try is the restore feature, if it won;t allow you to do that you can pretty much forget about getting rid of the virus w/o having to wipe and start over.

shawn474

Thanks guys.

Heiney9, that's what I was afraid of. I have a buddy who works in IT that I just talked to. He said that he wouldn't even attempt removal because it is such a pain in the balls. He is just going to reimage the laptop and get it over with.

Thanks again,
Shawn

Fireman32

I use Malwarebytes. Download it and run the update and then keep updating and scanning your computer untill it comes back clean. We have had this on a few of our work computers and it cleaned it up.

It is number 5 on download.com

wutadumsn23

I was just reading how Malwarebytes has cleared up this virus and other PITA viruses like it. H9 is much more educated than me on this subject and if your IT buddy has you covered, you may just want to go that route. Good luck.

-Jeff

heiney9

I think it really depends as I used Malwarebytes as well as some other very powerful programs and I couldn't get mine completely cleaned. My friend had her computer so screwed up because she kept clicking on the pop-ups that even a professional IT company who does this type of work for a living couldn't get it completely cleaned.

First step is to try Windows restore, if the virus has disabled that then you're in for a tough time.

My knowledge comes from experiencing this type of virus. Other than that I don't work in IT, but if my brother couldn't clean my virus than it was a pretty serious infection.

GL

H9

P.s. Malwarebytes is a free DL so it won;t hurt to give it a shot, but I'm pretty certain it's not going to clean it 100%. In my case Malwarebytes seemed to fix it, but it came right back within a few hours

Fireman32

I am not saying that it is a guarenteed fix. If you catch it early when it first starts with the popups you are going to be able to remove this. Out of the 15 to 20 machines that got it at work I only had to re-image 1. Good Luck

bruss

sounds like the smithfraud deal.. And it is a pain in the balls. what is the name of the company that it sends you to? Start by googling that

billbillw

I had that stupid thing on my work computer awhile back. The trick is to stop it ASAP and remove it before it spreads itself throughout your system. I recognized it immediately and started a scan. It is a major pain in the balls though.

Knucklehead

+1 for Malwarebytes....H9 may be correct though, some of these can really screw up your laptop/pc.

shawn474

Yeah, it has gotten worse overnight. I shut it down as soon as I suspected something was wrong (probably not a good idea, but I panicked). My virus scan picked up like 5 detections, but could not clean them. When I rebooted this morning, it was much worse and happening more often. The problem is that it blocks everything I try to do. I can't even get on line right now. So I just turned it off and will get it re-imaged. Thanks for all of the help and suggestions. I apprecaite all of your time.

bruss

if you unplug you internet it wont be as bad i suspect. This will give you time to at least get your data off.

shawn474

I backed up almost everything I had on it onto a flash drive so I shouldn't lose much, if anything. Just sucks that it will be out of commission for the next 2 weeks until my buddy gets a chance to image it. My 1 year old keeps pointing to it and crying saying, "Want Elmo daddy!!!" (She plays elmo's keyboard-o-rama on it all the time). It's actually pretty funny.

heiney9

shawn474 wrote: »

Yeah, it has gotten worse overnight. I shut it down as soon as I suspected something was wrong (probably not a good idea, but I panicked). My virus scan picked up like 5 detections, but could not clean them. When I rebooted this morning, it was much worse and happening more often. The problem is that it blocks everything I try to do. I can't even get on line right now. So I just turned it off and will get it re-imaged. Thanks for all of the help and suggestions. I apprecaite all of your time.

Yep, you have it bad, as bad as my friend had it. When I was attacked I was running Vipre anti-virus and it did detect it and I assume limited the damage. My main problem was 1) disabled Windows restore function 2) everytime I tried to use Google or similar search engine it would randomly redirect to all kinds of websites. It would never let me get to my destination. If I used the tabs in my browser I was fine, but any internet search ended with me being redirected to random sites. Not **** or even malicious sites, just random sites. Occasionally I'd get the "I have a virus, click here to get rid of it" pop-ups.

H9

shawn474

heiney9 wrote: »

Yep, you have it bad, as bad as my friend had it. When I was attacked I was running Vipre anti-virus and it did detect it and I assume limited the damage. My main problem was 1) disabled Windows restore function 2) everytime I tried to use Google or similar search engine it would randomly redirect to all kinds of websites. It would never let me get to my destination. If I used the tabs in my browser I was fine, but any internet search ended with me being redirected to random sites. Not **** or even malicious sites, just random sites.

That's exactly what is happening to me. It is routing me to a website to purchase anti-virus software (ironic isn't it?:)) or to viagra.com (i am not THAT old) or to an "unable to display" page. It won't let me do anything at all without routing to a website of having a balloon pop-up saying that I am infected. :eek:

heiney9

shawn474 wrote: »

That's exactly what is happening to me. It is routing me to a website to purchase anti-virus software (ironic isn't it?:)) or to viagra.com (i am not THAT old) or to an "unable to display" page. It won't let me do anything at all without routing to a website of having a balloon pop-up saying that I am infected. :eek:

I was lucky since I had just put in a new hard drive and I had done a complete back-up (image) of my old HD, I just wiped the drive and re-imaged with the 30d old back-up. Ever since, I now back up (on an external HD) everynight using Acronis back-up in case this happens again. Good piece of mind.

bruss

its defenitley smithfraud. it is hard to get rid of because you have to find a DLL hidden in your system. If you dont find it it just keeps reinstalling itself if need be. Obviously the DLL filename changes or there are multiple or whatever.. it is fixable but easier to re image IMO. My mom gets this 2 times a year lol.