Finding a virus

[ominous24]

I somehow got virus and it is driving me nuts. It wiped my system restore so I can't just use that from a previous save point. I found a bunch of files that were opening fake virus protection software and renamed them so that stopped. I am down to an annoying pop-up virus that opens random web pages every so often. Anybody have tips on how I can find this program?

I tried to format but this is Vista which is just a disaster. I opened the DOS window as admin but it says "system partition can't be formatted."

How do I format with Vista so I can reinstall?

Thanks guys...

 

[DemonH2]

Boot to disc with an XP disc or even Vista disc.....if you bought the PC with vista it should have came with some disc haha.

But yeah just boot to disc(it restart the PC with the disc in and it should say press any key to boot from media or something like that, if not then go into bios and change your boot device priority to make your cd drive #1) and follow the crap its generally pretty self explanatory... this boots before the hard drive so it would be very difficult for a virus to effect it.

 

[ominous24]

Hmm, I tried starting the computer with the Vista DVD inserted and it gave me an error about an unauthorized change in windows occurred. The only options was to close, which logged me out of the computer, or to look online for solutions but it only talked about unauthorized applications. I will try again.

 

[DemonH2]

Nah that shouldn't effect this. I think you are allowing it to boot all the way into vista. Go into your BIOS(not clue how computer savy you are so let me know if you don't know how to do that) and change your DVD drive to be the 1st in boot priority, then after you reboot, before vista boots up it should say something like "Press any key to boot from device" or something. Then locate that mystical "any" key on your keyboard and then it should be pretty east to figure out.

 

[ominous24]

How do I get into BIOS with Vista? DEL takes me to some boot options dealing with Vista and the TAB button doesn't really do much of anything before the OS boots.

 

[DemonH2]

Vista doesn't really matter...it all depends on the motherboard manufacturer....some common ones are del.....f12....f4..... and yeah....i would try f12 first...

 

[ThunderStruck]

it might be F11 or F12 (forget which one it is). sometimes to get into the bios it's "del", "F11" (or "F12"). Watch the screen as your computer boots up there is almost always a line of text that gets spammed as it starts that will tell you. It will be quick (or be covered by a spash screen, in which case just hit the button it says to remove it, usually at the bottom of the screen).

or just do what I do when I can't remember tap each one back and forth while it starts up. Just be calm about it, mashing keys at the start up can do some nasty things (if your doing more than 1 key at a time). Also if you hear a beep when you hit the key it means your pushing the keys too many times, slow down.

 

[burntbulb]

i used to reformat to fix about any thing, but i no longer have working boot disks, i do however have windows installed on 2 diff hard drives on my pc, and if one fails i can boot off of the other. but any way i can normally fix most stuff that gets on my pc with spybot S&D and hijack this...

 

[JimJohnson]

www.trendmicro.com use the online virus scanner. Also check your computer for malware/spyware as thats more of what it sounds like you have.

 

[DemonH2]

That online scanner does indeed work well. The viruses don't usually know that they should hide from it.

However I am definitely a "screw it lets format" kind of guy. I dunno why, i just like the feeling of a fresh OS.

 

[ducksausage]

If you cant get into the OS you can Make a BartPE boot disk and run a virus scan off that.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

 

[JimJohnson]

That online scanner does indeed work well. The viruses don't usually know that they should hide from it.

However I am definitely a "screw it lets format" kind of guy. I dunno why, i just like the feeling of a fresh OS.

I agree its not worth fucking with it. If I even think I have a virus I just say fuck it and drop in my Vista DVD and do a clean install. I have actually gotten to the point I drop in a Mac OS DVD and run a low level format then do vista install.

 

[DemonH2]

I really haven't run into any problems in a long time. My secret is for anything that could potentially be unsafe to my computer, I open up in my XP VMWare box.....revert to snapshot when I am done.

Haven't had a virus in probably 4 years, so I guess it works. This also explains why I am pretty terrible at fighting viruses =p