Thanks to everyone's help, I was able to identify some of infected files running the antivirus that Johnny Footstool suggested prior to Windows booting (so my skepticism was thankfully wrong ). I'm definitely not 100% confident everything is 100% back to the way it was prior to getting this, but at least I can launch programs like Hijack This and Search and Destroy Now. Thanks so much to everyone again...I'll keep you posted.
Thanks so much once again, everyone. I appear to be good to go again *knock on wood*.
I also use Avast - Free and better than most of the programs you pay for.
The Virus is likely in your system's memory so that you can only remove it upon booting up - as mentioned above do a boot-time scan with Avast and it should find it - keep Avast running and these malware programs will not bother you again - I've been using it for years now.
Avast rocks! Glad it worked for you, Boss!
"I prefer books and movies where the conflict isn't of the extreme cannibal apocalypse variety I guess." Redsfaithful
I've picked up that evil little bug at least three times now - took three different way to zap it. Once was a total system wipe (It had been three years since I had last done it, anyhow). Another time, I used a peer to peer to pick up Spybot (I couldn't download anything), and a third time I used a peer to peer to pick up a program called "VundoFix" (I think that is the one). All three worked - and I still have no idea how I picked that junk up.
CCleaner is great, as is Glary Utilities. I run Glary about 3-4 times a week.
I had a redirect when my daughter started using peer to peer to get music. took a day to clean off the crap.
My suggestions are to do the following:
- From another computer get a copy of malware bytes
- install malwarebytes and reboot into safemode without networking
- run malwarebytes. go out to dinner.
- reboot into safe mode with networking, allow malwarebytes to update. If it updates, run it again.
- Open your hosts file, and clear it.
- Run Spybot and re-immunize.
If that doesn't do the trick, Hijack This is likely your only option
Dubito Ergo Cogito Ergo Sum.
I had a similar situation recently which a really nasty hijacker that I couldn't get rid of. I ran those spyware programs I had...Ad-Aware and SpySweeper - but they didn't remove it.
I ended up buying XoftSpySE, which is highly rated, and it did the trick. I use it quite regularly now
http://www.paretologic.com/xoftspy/s...ay/spyware.php
"In my day you had musicians who experimented with drugs. Now it's druggies experimenting with music" - Alfred G Clark (circa 1972)
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