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From: Tim on 11 Nov 2009 07:21
My wife's laptop has picked up a world of trouble.

It's kept fully updated and runs Avast normally. It started crashing
randomly and turning off its own firewall & security centre. We haven't been
able to run a virus scan without it either locking up or otherwise crashing
before completion.

We've tried Kaspersky & Trencillin housecall in normal mode & safe mode but
they keep getting shut down.

All these problems may or may not be associated with a daughter home from
uni who has been using her external drive with this laptop.

I've got an Ubuntu disk I'm going to try but I'm open to other suggestions.

Tim

From: Tim on 11 Nov 2009 09:13
Tim wrote:

> I've got an Ubuntu disk I'm going to try but I'm open to other
> suggestions.

Um.. assume I'm an idiot. Darned if I can work out how to install Fprot
running in Live CD mode.

Tim

From: Victek on 11 Nov 2009 11:39
> My wife's laptop has picked up a world of trouble.
>
> It's kept fully updated and runs Avast normally. It started crashing
> randomly and turning off its own firewall & security centre. We haven't
> been able to run a virus scan without it either locking up or otherwise
> crashing before completion.
>
> We've tried Kaspersky & Trencillin housecall in normal mode & safe mode
> but they keep getting shut down.
>
> All these problems may or may not be associated with a daughter home from
> uni who has been using her external drive with this laptop.
>
> I've got an Ubuntu disk I'm going to try but I'm open to other
> suggestions.
>
..
Try installing and running MalwareBytes AntiMalware (MBAM). If it will
install but won't run try renaming the executable - some malware targets the
executable by name. There is also SuperAntiSpyware. You could also try an
online scanner such as Hitman Pro (free trial ware).

If none of these work you can create a bootable CD with UBCD4WIN that will
include a number of antimalware apps.

Last, you can remove the hard disk from the laptop and put it in a USB
enclosure (very inexpensive) so you can scan it on another PC. That's
actually pretty easy and likely to succeed since the infected OS is not
being booted (as long as you're savvy with hardware). Hope some of this
helps you out.

From: Tim on 11 Nov 2009 11:48
Victek wrote:
> Try installing and running MalwareBytes AntiMalware (MBAM). If it
> will install but won't run try renaming the executable - some malware
> targets the executable by name. There is also SuperAntiSpyware. You
> could also try an online scanner such as Hitman Pro (free trial ware).
>
> If none of these work you can create a bootable CD with UBCD4WIN that
> will include a number of antimalware apps.
>
> Last, you can remove the hard disk from the laptop and put it in a USB
> enclosure (very inexpensive) so you can scan it on another PC. That's
> actually pretty easy and likely to succeed since the infected OS is
> not being booted (as long as you're savvy with hardware). Hope some
> of this helps you out.

That last option sounds like it's worth trying. I used to have an enclosure
kicking about somewhere but I think it's been nicked by my daughters!

Thanks for all the other pointers too.

Tim

From: Tim on 12 Nov 2009 12:12
Victek wrote:

>
> Last, you can remove the hard disk from the laptop and put it in a USB
> enclosure (very inexpensive) so you can scan it on another PC. That's
> actually pretty easy and likely to succeed since the infected OS is
> not being booted (as long as you're savvy with hardware). Hope some
> of this helps you out.

I managed to buy a cable from my local shop for �2.50 to link up the laptop
sata drive to my PC.

Scanning it with Avast and it's found and deleted Win32:Adloader-AC[trj] in
"G:\pagefile.sys" file. (G being the drive letter my PC has assigned to the
affected drive). I thought that might be me fixed but on seaching the net
the opinion seems to be that this is usually a false alarm and that the
pagefile.sys file isn't routinely scanned. I guess it got scanned on this
occasion as it's now an extra drive.

Now I'm sure that the computer was infected with something, just too many
strange things going on with security settings and antivirus programs so I'm
left wondering if there is something else it might have missed? It's had a
full scan with Windows Defender. I haven't tried the malwarebytes site yet
but it's currently undergoing a "Housecall".

Anything else I should do or just slap it back in the laptop and see if it's
behaving?

Tim

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