JIM WELLER (1:123/140) wrote to STEVEN HORN at 19:10 on 04 Sep 2004:

 JW> I was nailed by some kind of nasty malware that has knocked out my
 JW> machine for over two weeks. Now I've been computing since 1986 and
 JW> never ever had a virus or any other similar problem before: I use a
 JW> pop up killer, Spybot, a virus scanner and Zone Alarm, but
 JW> something snuck through anyway and opened up a back door that
 JW> allowed several viri and dialer programs to download. My first clue
 JW> was when a dozen new programs tried to access the net one morning
 JW> and Zone Alarm popped up. I said "no" to all and started to wipe
 JW> them out. Spybot killed a few, F-Prot got a few more but others
 JW> could not be deleted under Windows as they were using Windows files
 JW> to operate with. So I dropped down into DOS and deleted them all.
 JW> For good measure I also deleted any related tmp, dat and dll files
 JW> with the same date stamp on them. Unfortunately at least a few of
 JW> these were legitimate Windows files but with altered date stamps on
 JW> them. By the time I was done Explorer and Outlook wouldn't work.

Someone must have really dumped a mess on you.  I use Zone Alarm Pro,
Norton AntiVirus and SpySweeper but all are set to update automatically so
very little gets out of date.  The same goes for my Windows 2000.

And then for good measure I installed a small program called Qwik-Fix Pro
to take care of browser shortcomings.  So I think my system is OK and so
far it has been.

And I think I might have dropped into Windows safe mode rather than DOS to
complete the cleanup. 

 JW> Now because I have a sleazy Compaq, I don't have restore disks. So
 JW> I had to take the machine downtown to a shop to re-install Windows,
 JW> Explorer and Outlook, and finish the virus cleaning.

But you got it done and you're back which is good news.  Will answer the
balance of your note later.

Take care,

Steven Horn (steven.horn{at}gmail.com)
Moderator, ALASKA_CHAT 
--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+