Thank you Rocky, and a warning !

GringoCArlos

Retired Ussername
Jan 9, 2002
1,416
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Thank you again to Rocky for telling me about IObit Security 360 scanning software.

I got hit with a really nasty worm/trojan in my computer last Tuesday - and I do all of my financial business online. I was sweating !

Daily, I run several programs to scan my computer proactively. I use a firewall with anti-virus, and now run IObit Security 360, Advanced System Care, and SuperAntiSpyware every day, thanks to Rocky. I now keep things pretty clean in my computer.

IObit 360 was the only program I normally run that picked up this trojan. IObit cleaned it, and then I rescanned my computer, and there it was again. This trojan restores itself if deleted, and I have spent the last 4 days trying to get rid of it. Friends who work in IT gave me 2 hours of their time and advice over the phone, and they couldn't get it out.

I ran several other free anti-malware products, which also then picked this up. I bought two of them in order to clean the machine, but they also failed to eliminate the problem. Here is what the report in IObit 360 looked like, after it said it had cleaned it out:

Registry Values Infected:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\taskman (Trojan.Agent) -> Quarantined and deleted successfully.

In my case, the trojan was named "Backdoor.bot", but there are many variations.

Finally, I discovered a wonderful online (and free) forum called "Malwarebytes" which also has an anti-malware scan. Here is their link:

Malwarebytes Forum

You send in your data from the scan in a message to the folks on the Malwarebytes forum, and they answer back with either removal instructions, or in my case, a folder which the next scan then captured and sent a report back to them. They then updated the scan which both found additional hidden worms and also got rid of them for good. My computer is clean now, thanks to Malwarebytes, but I would have never known about this problem without Rocky's advice this past summer.

Be careful out there folks. Keep your programs updated, and update your scanning programs before you run them. You just might save yourselves the big headache of having to call all of your financial institutions to prevent unauthorized activities on your accounts.
 

Hillbilly

Moderator
Jan 1, 2002
18,948
514
113
Thanks for posting this, you reminded me that I have to do my Rocky-mandated maintenance.

HB
 

Rocky

Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Apr 4, 2002
13,993
208
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www.rockysbar.com
Thanks for the kind words

Malwarebytes, Superantispyware and IObit 360 are essential in this day and age of malware. (I don't remember mentioning it to you)
The other ones are old school now.
These 3 do the job.
I have a bit of preference for Avira over AVG for Anti Virus, but both are at the top and either will do the job.
Windows Firewall is perfect and one needs not get an additional one, and avoid these alleged registry cleaners.
The Reg Cleaner in IObit's Advanced System Care is the only one that I trust and we have a ton of experience with it.
Their Smart Defrag program is also excellent and the only one that is better than Window's own.
If you have all of the above, you're as protected as can be at virtually no cost to your resources, and if/when you do get infiltrated, between all of them, one of them should get rid of the problem.
Then the ASC and Smart Defrag will keep your puter pretty clean and fast.
There are, of course, other tweaks and tricks, but the stuff listed above is 85% of the battle.

PS: For those planning on bringing puters over, I will be away from Oct 10 to 26.
 

Eddy

Silver
Jan 1, 2002
3,668
219
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While we're in the Thank You mode

Marc just fixed my old work horse laptop. It went from"Gonna throw it out" to "sh*t" I'm sorry that I bought another one. It flies-flyes ( I donno how you spell it.) Thanks guy.
 

Arrica

New member
Jun 3, 2006
181
6
0
Marc just fixed my old work horse laptop. It went from"Gonna throw it out" to "sh*t" I'm sorry that I bought another one. It flies-flyes ( I donno how you spell it.) Thanks guy.

yep - the latter is an insect;)
 

Rocky

Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Apr 4, 2002
13,993
208
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www.rockysbar.com
Marc just fixed my old work horse laptop. It went from"Gonna throw it out" to "sh*t" I'm sorry that I bought another one. It flies-flyes ( I donno how you spell it.) Thanks guy.
De nada.
Keep those broken machines coming.
Other than cruising, fixin' puters is my favorite entertainment.
 
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AZB

Platinum
Jan 2, 2002
12,290
519
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i have just fixed a dell inspiron 6000. it had a cracked screen and a broken dc power jack. It was given to me for free. I got the screen for 55 bucks (used-ebay) and $4.99 for the power jack. I also put in 15 bucks of 1gig ram. The screen took me 20 minutes to install, the power jack took me 2 hours to take out off the motherboard. It was a bitch and a pain in the butt. I am surprised I didn't end up damaging the whole mother-board which had to be taken out from the laptop. The powerjack on this laptop is very well mounted and i had to de-solder like 10 points. The solder was tough and the points were microscopic. Finally all was put together and all is working well and charging the battery. I got me a dell inspiron 6000 for extremely cheap. I will configure it exactly as rocky has advised us to do.
AZB
 

ExtremeR

Silver
Mar 22, 2006
3,078
328
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Really good find, but keep in mind that those malwares, virus, are intact in your hard drive. Let's hope it doesn't come back in the future (without taking anything away from Rocky's which I (network and system engineer) know that is a lot in the field) as some malware or virus just hid for a week to then come back. If you do business online always do a ghost backup of your hard drive or at least have a backup computer ready for the task you need.