Begin the new year right with a spiffy clean PC: Donna at the The Silence of Our Friends has a handy guide up to getting rid of viruses, malware and spyware:
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Tips to Troubleshoot Your Computer & Keep It CleanI figure it couldn’t hurt to tell people what I learned messing around with the computer all day yesterday.
First, when we were getting the blue screen of death our computer would shut down and start back up, but since the fatal error happened each time within a minute or so of start up, it was a vicious cycle. The worst part is that I couldn’t read what the error was in the bsod, not that I was sure I could understand that gibberish anyway, but you know. Anyway, I found out that Windows XP is set up to automatically restart when there is an error like that. If you need it to stop so that you can read the error, then you right click ‘my computer’ (Usually under the start menu but also can be on the desktop), then click ‘properties’, then click the ‘advanced’ tab, then the ‘settings’ button next to start up and recovery, in there clear the box next to ‘automatically restart’. Now you can read the bsod. There was a line in mine that said: C:\windows\system32:lzx32.sys So I went online and looked up lzx32.sys and found out it is a rootkit trojan with many names but the one I needed to know was backdoor.rustock.b since there is a program made specially to get rid of it, and damn I could have saved myself alot of time yesterday if I knew that.
If your computer is getting the bsod too fast to do this, then it might help to start your computer in safe mode. In safe mode it starts with the minimum drivers so that all your programs aren’t loading, and hopefully whatever is causing the error won’t load. When you start your computer click F8 repeatedly before windows starts, there should be a screen that you can use the arrow keys to start in safe mode.
The other thing I learned is that some of these viruses and trojans find good hiding places in your computer to self replicate. You need to clean out your temp files and cache at the very least. Windows makes a program especially for this; go to start>programs>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup. Even if you aren’t having problems with your PC it wouldn’t hurt to use this once in awhile since your computer will run faster the less crap it has on it.
One last thing, these viruses and trojans will hide in system restore, that’s right, your computer saves a copy of them in there. That’s why it didn’t help for me to use system restore on our computer. So if you find that using it didn’t help, then you will have to shut it off so that when your virus scan runs it will get all of it. The bad part, if you shut it off you lose all your restore points, but if they have viruses in there they aren’t worth saving anyway. To shut it off right click ‘my computer>properties>system restore and mark the box to turn it off.
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Some antivirus programs are very good, the same with the programs to find spyware, but none of them are perfect. So the best thing to do is use several, what one misses the next one might get, or the next, or the next. I only have one antivirus program on my computer, but when there are problems I use the free online scans too, I also have three spyware/malware/adware scanners, a firewall, and a program that warns me when new programs are being added to my computer. And, um, er, they are all free. Yes everything I use to protect my computer is free, because I’m cheap, and you’d think the free stuff is crap compared to the programs you pay for…BUT YOU’D BE WRONG! Free is good all around. So if you don’t already have an antivirus program on your computer, get one! Here’s a few to choose from:
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And while we’re on the subject of cleaning up computers, can I make a plea for people not to clear the cache and the deleted files, without first checking with the person whose Windows profile you’re in ? That strikes me as one of the most bad-mannered things one could do with a pc and analagous to clearing out the contents of someone’s handbag into the bin without asking.
There wasn’t anything essential in there, but there might’ve been – it’s the principle of the bloody thing that matters.
Am I still peeved? How ever did you guess?
