Has anyone ever got the "antivirus xp 2008" virus.....

[Flabbergasted]

My wife downloaded a song off the internet over the weekend and had this thing attached....

http://www.windowsvistaplace.com/xp-antivirus-2008-removal-instructions-xp-antivirus-2008/spyware-removal


To make a long story short it changed a massive number of settings, disabled my internet, deleted all my restore points, removed programs from my desktop etc. Meanwhile the program itself says you have a virus and must buy their $70 program.

At first I couldn't get a spyware program to run in normal or safe mode (neither loaded fully or correctly). After some fiddling I was able to remove some viruses right before the Hard Drive failed.




:grr:

[DailyGrind51]

1. About two years ago, I was looking for Elvis Costello's lyrics

for his version of "Scarlet Tide" and invited a nasty trojan that took me a day to get rid of! I feel your pain!

[hendo]

2. if you are going to engage in piracy

make sure that your anti-virus definitions and anti-spyware definitions are all up to date. Or, only download from uploaders you trust. And make sure to run a virus scan on ANYTHING that you download from a somewhat questionable source BEFORE you open it.

[Flabbergasted]

4. Oh no, it wasn't piracy. I rarely do that. nt

[hendo]

5. sorry, you said "downloaded a song"

and usually if there is a virus attatched to an mp3 it is because that mp3 was obtained through less than legal means.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against piracy, but you need to be safe about it.

[Marrah_G]

3. That is a tough one- here is how I got rid of it.

I am pretty darn good with getting rid of this stuff, but I broke down and actually purchased "Spyware Doctor" one of the few spyware cleaners that actually gets rid of this program. It costs 30 bucks for the year.

There is a terrific free program called "Spy-bot search and destroy" that accepts donations but requires no money. It is a must to have, but did not take out the program you have.

[fla nocount]

6. Yep, picked it up a/b two weeks ago on the machine that I allow

to run "dirty". When it gets so bad as to become unusable I'll wipe, reformat and load. I've been advised that once it's in system.exe it's the only solution. Spybot is good advice if you can catch it while it's just a balloon on the tool bar as Spybot will deny registry changes. Of course loading Spybot before the infection would have been even better.

I've found that with myself and 2 teenage boys, running a cheap "surfin machine" knowing that it will get "dirty" pays in the long run, just wipe and load as necessary.