Spyware Removal

[TeamCasey]

Can you monitor the XP firewall? How can you tell if someone is trying to access your computer? Does it give a report?

Sometimes my pointer will show as an hourglass like somethings going on when it shouldn't be. Creeps me out.

[marcshoe]

I was attacked by the about: blank adware, and spent months running every conceivable program to get rid of it, without success. Finally, I accidently hit on a solution.

The time was off a bit on my computer, and when I went in to re-set it, I accidently reset the year to 2009 or some such thing. Several days later, I noticed the wrong date and set it back to the correct year.

I haven't had my homepage changed since.

The best I can figure, the little spy in my computer now thinks it's already done its dirtywork up through 2009. I probably won't have to worry about it again for four more years now.

Kind of a weird solution, but it worked.

[TRF]

Originally Posted by TeamCasey

Can you monitor the XP firewall? How can you tell if someone is trying to access your computer? Does it give a report?

Sometimes my pointer will show as an hourglass like somethings going on when it shouldn't be. Creeps me out.

TC go with Zone Alarm. you can actually watch it blocking attacks. It's much beeter that the one supplied by XP.

[GAC]

Originally Posted by BigRedHotPotato

Just curious. GAC do you run an Instant Messager such as AIM or Yahoo IM, etc.??

These programs leave your computer vulnerable to spyware and attacks.

No I don't. I use to have AIM a year or so ago, but removed it from my computer.

I disabled the XP firewall and installed Zone Alarm. I've had it before and really liked it. I didn't realize that the XP firewall really wasn't that reliable.

I also really like that free Beta version of Microsoft's spyware remover. Pretty nifty.

[TRF]

Originally Posted by GAC

No I don't. I use to have AIM a year or so ago, but removed it from my computer.

I disabled the XP firewall and installed Zone Alarm. I've had it before and really liked it. I didn't realize that the XP firewall really wasn't that reliable.

I also really like that free Beta version of Microsoft's spyware remover. Pretty nifty.

It works because Microsoft didn't develop it, they bought it.

[Red Leader]

My home computer runs WIN98, so I couldn't install the Microsoft Beta Spyware.

Everything seems to be working fine now that I have Anti-Vir and the Zone Alarm firewall running, though and keep it clean with Spy Subtract

[GAC]

OK. Here is the problem I have had with Zone Alarm in the past, and it has now resurfaced. My kid's computer is networked with mine using a cat5 cable and an ethernet card in each computer. My computer (host) has XP, and the kid's computer has Win98, so mine recognized and set up the networking.

But Zone Alarm keeps shutting out the kid's computer so they can't get on the network. The IP address that is my kid's computer is entered into Zone Alarms "trusted" configuration; but it still will not allow me to share the internet with them. Resolutions anyone?

[TRF]

upgrade to xp?

[GAC]

Originally Posted by TRF

upgrade to xp?

On my kid's computer? I'm trying, but I ran into a "glitch" in the installation process. I keep getting a blue "Stop" screen from XP saying they stopped installation to keep from possibly damaging the computer.

Now I have formatted their computer and installed only the WIN98 OS back in, and then ran Microsoft's XP Advisor which checks your computer's compatability. The only thing they show that is not compatible is the integrated graphics driver (It's a Compaq Presario 5008US). So I am looking into getting a video card (they need one anyhow to play some of their more detailed video games), and then disabling the onboard graphics card.

That's my next projext.

But IMO, I just don't see how not having XP on their computer would prevent it, when it works fine whenever I disable Zone Alarm. I'm figuring it has something to do with Zone Alarm configuration.

[redhead]

I had a guy at work tell me how great Microsoft's new AntiSpyware program was and installed in on all our computers. It found all sorts of stuff and effectively killed it.

I put downloaded it on my computer at home. It found about 1200 files or whatever. I've been a really bad girl.... downloading music from Kaaza, WinMx, instant messengers from Aol and Yahoo, stuipid little things my friend sends me in email, etc. (but not porn).

Last night before I began surfing the net I ran Microsoft AntiSpyware. It proudly announced my computer free of all known spyware. I started surfing the web and all was fine for about 30 minutes. Then I accessed a television show fan site that took me (no exaggeration) 45 seconds to go from page to page. (I have DSL). After I got off that site, after attempting to do a search for 'Arc of Beauty' I was hijacked to a porn site. I ran AntiSpyware again and it proudly annouced me spyware free.

I'm ready to throw my computer out the window.

[GAC]

That is one of the big reasons why I no longer run alot of that stuff on my computer (AIM, Messenger, etc). Also, if you are running regular Kazaa and not Kazaalite, then you are really running a risk.

[redhead]

Now you tell me.

[GAC]

Originally Posted by redhead

Now you tell me.

Regular Kazaa runs on spyware. So everytime you use it you're downloading spyware. That is when they came out with Kazaalite, which doesn't. But running Kazaalite does not mean you can't still downlaod infected files either (especially with viruses).

[Roy Tucker]

Through my company, I get a free copy of VMware. VMware allows you to set up multiple virtual machines on one hardware platform.

So on one of my home machines, I have 3 virtual systems:

- One Windows XP is what the kids use and it collects spyware like fleas. I give it a best effort to keep it cleaned up, but kids will be kids.
- Another Windows XP is what my wife and I use and keep it squeaky clean.
- And the 3rd is a Red Hat Linux system (RH EL 3.0 ES) that I play with to keep my Unix chops up to date.

If the kids' virtual machine gets too bad, I just save off their docs, delete the virtual machine, and reinstall. It's a lot less painful than reformatting the disk and installing from scratch.

And yeah, Kazaa is about the worst thing in the world you can install on your system.

[redhead]

Just realized my computer is more screwed up than I realized. I can't even do Automatic Updates. It just says looking for updates and then it just sit there. Screen says 'done' and nothing has been done. I tried to backup my files (my documents folder) and it won't let me do that either. Am I doomed to reformat my hard drive and start again?