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Stomping out computer viruses....
Dec. 30th, 2011 12:54 amIt's been a busy week for me, which is good. My friend Scott had two computer projects for me to work on.
The first project was to resurrect his old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop computer. It wouldn't power on. I downloaded the maintance manual, took apart the laptop, replaced the CMOS battery (which was under the modem card), and.......nothing.
The second project was to get rid of a nasty computer virus on his desktop computer. It even masqueraded as a virus scanning program that didn't report the originating company, but prompted you to buy a full version from them. (It was called XP Antispyware 2012. Details here.) Not previously knowing this, I downloaded the latest version of the AVG Rescue CD, burned it to a CD-R, and ran it. I then found that the administrator password had been reset, so I resorted to the trusty System Rescue CD to clear the password. And to add insult to injury, .exe files wouldn't run because the association between .exe files and the command(s) to run them had been hosed as well. I found a Microsoft FixIt program to correct this, but because the fix was itself an .exe file, it wouldn't run. (Duh!) I found a list of registry fixes at www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm, and downloaded and ran the one for .exe files. Success! When I left earlier this evening, MalwareBytes was running a scan.
Scott wants to re-install a firewall program to prevent this from ever happening again. He head been using ZoneAlarm 2006, but the software sabotaged itself by corrupting a necessary file. I advised him to set a restore point before installing, in case he needs to roll back. In case that doesn't work, what good and robust firewall programs for Windows XP are out there?
The first project was to resurrect his old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop computer. It wouldn't power on. I downloaded the maintance manual, took apart the laptop, replaced the CMOS battery (which was under the modem card), and.......nothing.
The second project was to get rid of a nasty computer virus on his desktop computer. It even masqueraded as a virus scanning program that didn't report the originating company, but prompted you to buy a full version from them. (It was called XP Antispyware 2012. Details here.) Not previously knowing this, I downloaded the latest version of the AVG Rescue CD, burned it to a CD-R, and ran it. I then found that the administrator password had been reset, so I resorted to the trusty System Rescue CD to clear the password. And to add insult to injury, .exe files wouldn't run because the association between .exe files and the command(s) to run them had been hosed as well. I found a Microsoft FixIt program to correct this, but because the fix was itself an .exe file, it wouldn't run. (Duh!) I found a list of registry fixes at www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm, and downloaded and ran the one for .exe files. Success! When I left earlier this evening, MalwareBytes was running a scan.
Scott wants to re-install a firewall program to prevent this from ever happening again. He head been using ZoneAlarm 2006, but the software sabotaged itself by corrupting a necessary file. I advised him to set a restore point before installing, in case he needs to roll back. In case that doesn't work, what good and robust firewall programs for Windows XP are out there?
