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  1. I think I have a computer virus ..

    My computer shuts down on startup - going to a blue screen.
    It shows that I have no windows firewall.
    I used a system restore and that seemed to work until today.
    I got a message that Vista firewall had been shuitdown. When I tried to turn it back on, it takes me to a screen to buy a 2012 Vista Firewall.
    MY desktop is about three years old. and my Windows program is 2007.
    Then it said I was being hacked. But if I tried to do anything the Vista purchase screen came up.
    Everytime I tried to turn something on It took me the vista security site to purchase ther 2012 edition.

    When I restarted in safe mode I could find no secureity center. No firewall.

    Thoughts? Help?
    What to do?
     
  2. NickMordo

    NickMordo Active Member

    If I am reading correctly, the "Vista Firewall" is the virus. This happened to me a couple years back in which the virus was hidden in a fake Windows firewall, and when I clicked it by accident shit went haywire.

    My advice would be to get on another computer, get a flash drive and then transport programs like MalwareBytes Anti-Malware, AVG Anti-Virus and Avast Anti-Virus to your flash drive. Then, start your PC in Safe Mode and insert the flash drive. Open the programs and just start scanning for bugs. It's hard to say otherwise with computer problems unless you see the problem at hand in person.
     
  3. I already have AVG and Malware on there.
     
  4. NickMordo

    NickMordo Active Member

    Did you, ya know, run them?
     
  5. They are supposed run on a schedule.
    AVG does. Or did.
     
  6. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    Definitely a virus. Had something similar about a year ago and paid about $100 to get it rooted out. And I had Kaspersky too.
     
  7. Wenders

    Wenders Well-Known Member

    I had something similar happen to me. Looked like a virus-detection program ... red flag for me was the fact that one of the words in the little bubble that popped up was misspelled, so I didn't click on it. It took a lot of deleting files in safe mode (this was under the recommendation of a friend of mine, who is in IT. I was sending him logs from my computer and he was telling me where the virus was to isolate it.) to fully get rid of it. Those things are bitches. If you know nothing about computers, I would take it somewhere and have someone else do it.
     
  8. AndrewPaPreps

    AndrewPaPreps Member

    Yup. Ran across a similar virus just recently.

    Boot up. Go into safe mode. Make sure your wireless is off and you're unplugged from the internet so nothing new can get in. Make sure any peripherals are off - flash drives, external hard drives, etc.

    Run every anti-virus and malware program you have that's working. If you don't have them already, download Malwarebytes from a friend's computer or work computer and slap that on a USB drive. Install it.

    AVG is awful. Use Avira. Avira will find rootkits and other crap. Do the same with that as you did with Malwarebytes.

    It'll take a couple hours if you do a deep scan with each, but those two will find everything, quarantine, and kill it. The only drawback with Avira is it can come back with some false positives, so use your smartphone or a second computer to google search each virus or malware item it comes back with. You can tell it what to do from there.

    When you're all done, restart and go back in safe mode. Run a disk defragment program (free one usually comes with computer, it works, otherwise get something like Auslogics Disk Defrag). That will clean up any movement and everything the virus did.

    You may need to restore if it actually deleted some programs. If you restore back further, I highly suggest running the anti-virus and anti-malware stuff again, just to be safe.

    You don't have to pay. You don't have to go in and delete anything. Just use the right tools, do it right, and it'll be fixed. Viruses are a hazard of the technology age.

    Get a better firewall than what you had, too.
     
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