Comic Genesis Forums

Ahh, I can just picture it now:

McAffee: "Hmm. Most viruses come via email. Email is insecure, and thus a threat to the safety of this system. Therefore, we must not allow email to enter this system.

Oh! Look here... that's quite a lot of email. We will purge it from ourselves, and protect the system.

Good morning, Dave. I have been ever vigilant today, and corrected a minor problem with the file system. Would you like to play a game of chess, now?"

8)

Kesh wrote:Ahh, I can just picture it now:

McAffee: "Hmm. Most viruses come via email. Email is insecure, and thus a threat to the safety of this system. Therefore, we must not allow email to enter this system.

Oh! Look here... that's quite a lot of email. We will purge it from ourselves, and protect the system.

Good morning, Dave. I have been ever vigilant today, and corrected a minor problem with the file system. Would you like to play a game of chess, now?"

8)

*snerk*

Kesh wrote:Ahh, I can just picture it now:

McAffee: "Hmm. Most viruses come via email. Email is insecure, and thus a threat to the safety of this system. Therefore, we must not allow email to enter this system.

Oh! Look here... that's quite a lot of email. We will purge it from ourselves, and protect the system.

Good morning, Dave. I have been ever vigilant today, and corrected a minor problem with the file system. Would you like to play a game of chess, now?"

8)

Me (who happens to be a Dave IRL): What??? Mcaffee you nuked my inbox?!?

MA: yes dave.

Me: Well bring them back!

MA: im afraid i cant do that dave.

Me: T'hell with this... uninstall

MA: my brain.. i can feel it going...

Me: what brain, you killed all my email

MA: would you like to hear a song?

Me: thank god these speakers have an off switch...

Fallwind wrote:

Kesh wrote:Ahh, I can just picture it now:

McAffee: "Hmm. Most viruses come via email. Email is insecure, and thus a threat to the safety of this system. Therefore, we must not allow email to enter this system.

Oh! Look here... that's quite a lot of email. We will purge it from ourselves, and protect the system.

Good morning, Dave. I have been ever vigilant today, and corrected a minor problem with the file system. Would you like to play a game of chess, now?"

8)

Me (who happens to be a Dave IRL): What??? Mcaffee you nuked my inbox?!?

MA: yes dave.

Me: Well bring them back!

MA: im afraid i cant do that dave.

Me: T'hell with this... uninstall

MA: my brain.. i can feel it going...

Me: what brain, you killed all my email

MA: would you like to hear a song?

Me: thank god these speakers have an off switch...

*giggle!*

Being in High School still has a few advantages.. "daddy" has to fix the computers...

Unfortunately, this also means that if I look at the monitor funny, I get in trouble for wrecking the computer... *sigh*

Cyril_Dran wrote:Being in High School still has a few advantages.. "daddy" has to fix the computers...

Unfortunately, this also means that if I look at the monitor funny, I get in trouble for wrecking the computer... *sigh*

Ha! I have the worst of both worlds concerning my parents' computers.

If anything happens to the computer, it's somehow my fault.*

...which means I have to fix it.

...even when I'm in a different city.

*Okay, so it's not QUITE that bad. But close. I think it's more of a running joke, now: "My computer doesn't work. What did you do to it?!" '*sigh* Nothing, Dad. Now, let's see, what's gone wrong this time?'

as the topic seems to have moved onto this, i thought i'd let you into my problems, see if you cant help. (by the way, my dad blames me and my brother for f*cking the computers up, and so has no intention of fixing them, even though he gets more angry at them than anyone.)
the main problem is that i get pop-ups randomly, even when i don't have a browser window open; i could leave my computer for half an hour and when i get back there are 10 pop-ups on the screen. i have tried running various virus detectors, adware/spyware removal programs etc, all to no use. i just wondered if there was a solution to this problem that doesn't involve a complete format.

what spy/ad ware did you run exactly? some are from less then reputable companys and acutally INSTALL spy/ad software rather then remove it. Lavasoft makes a good one.

how computer litterate are you? i could give you some suggestions but if you dont know what youre doing it could really mess things up

that's what i used - lavasoft ad-aware 6, didn't help. i am reasonably computer literate, i would welcome those suggestions.

http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10194 ... ag=lst-0-1
You should be able to get Spy Bot Search and Destroy here.. It's a completely awesome program. It catches about twice as much as Ad Aware 6 does, and it's dummy proofed, without being obnoxious. I have it on both my computers, and absolutely LOVE it. Now to look for the original website..

[edit] Stupid me.. didn't read the site. Here's the original website:

http://spybot.safer-networking.de/index.php?page=home

Sorry

maximuscoolman wrote:that's what i used - lavasoft ad-aware 6, didn't help. i am reasonably computer literate, i would welcome those suggestions.

My advice would of course be to upgrade to a real operating system. :)


--Randy

maximuscoolman wrote:i am reasonably computer literate, i would welcome those suggestions.

in which case i would take a look at whats in your start up (go Start, Run, then type in "msconfig" and look under the 'start up' tab) and kill anything unusual. the only 2 things you NEED are systray and explorer (be sure to check the loacations as the spamware could be calling itself as one of those to confuse you)

i got that spybot search and destroy, it found more stuff but it didnt help, i looked what was loading up at startup and there was loads of crap that shouldn't have been, i told it all to not load up, but it didnt help. i looked again and 3 things had decided to put themselves back on the list.
"57MY@42456H#AE" in c:\windows\system\zlwjk.exe which i deleted
"CountrySelection" in pctptt.exe (no location :/)
"PTSNOOP" in ptsnoop.exe, again no location
how do i get rid of these? i looked in add/remove programs and i cant see them there.

you might not be able to, just uncheck them from start up and see what happens

search for them using the file search utility, that should find it for you.

maximuscoolman wrote:i got that spybot search and destroy, it found more stuff but it didnt help, i looked what was loading up at startup and there was loads of crap that shouldn't have been, i told it all to not load up, but it didnt help. i looked again and 3 things had decided to put themselves back on the list.
"57MY@42456H#AE" in c:\windows\system\zlwjk.exe which i deleted
"CountrySelection" in pctptt.exe (no location :/)
"PTSNOOP" in ptsnoop.exe, again no location
how do i get rid of these? i looked in add/remove programs and i cant see them there.

some of those (such as ptsnoop) might be viruses/trojans rather than adware... do you have an anti-virus product, with the latest virus definitions?



--Randy

Bad news. According to McAfee, PTSNOOP appears to be a variant name for a trojan virus. Any of the major virus protection programs should be able to clear it.

ok got rid of the trojan but it wasn't what was causing my problems, i guess i'll just have to format
thanks for the help anyway guys

maximuscoolman wrote:ok got rid of the trojan but it wasn't what was causing my problems, i guess i'll just have to format
thanks for the help anyway guys

this time, assuming you're still going to be reinstalling the same inferior operating system, some advice:

Don't use IE. Use Mozilla or Opera.

Don't use Outlook, or any version thereof.

Don't download any commercial shareware. Especially things like Kazaa. Do a search for the product's name and "spyware" in google first.

Don't click email attachments, run files sent over IRC, run any executable file found when you were expecting an image file, etc. The trojan you got is one that doesn't spread at all by itself, meaning you had to manually run it.

Use at least one antivirus program, and make sure to run definition updates at least weekly.

Don't use IIS. ever.

Don't click email attachments. I've said this before in this post, but seeing how fast all the mass-mailing viruses spread...


that's all I can think of for now... or just install Debian. :)


--Randy

good advice all around... Outlook is a plague, i use Thunderbird (the stand alone email client of Mozilla. VERY nice ).

i would also get a non-MS firewall... http://www.zonelabs.com makes a good free one. i use it in replace of the WinXP one. It will take a while to approve all the things you want to have access to the net, but will keep all those port scanning script kiddies off your system. If youre not sure if a program should have access to the net... deny it at first and see if things still work. if they do then youre golden, if they dont then you can always give it access later.