Today my computer was taken over by one of those buy me programs
AntivirusXP08 Exactly!

I cant for the life of me get it to GO AWAY!
Will not let me do a system restore or anything
It keeps poping up on the Screen bothering the heck out of me


HELP if you can. Thanks

 

Try grabbing Webroot's Spysweeper. They should still have a trial version that will get rid of it. Alternatively, Lavasoft's AdAware might work, but personally I find it less effective in practice.

 

Lets try a few things..

I am not sure what file is controlling this. so we can start with the simple first..

Has this happened in the last few days??

Have you tried running System restore to go back to a date before the infection?

Most of the time this will work if it hasn't been to long..

 

OOPs! just reread the OP and found you already tried restore..

What I would try is first install Superantispyware.. It is a free program that has worked for me on some customers PC's.

Next download and try running VUNDOFIX_dot_exe (replace _dot_ with.)

If you google it there it will be the first option.

I believe this is a Vundo variant that this program should remove.

 

Thanks I will try that.

Damn thing took over my Google tool bar also.... takes me to Womans day mag

 

First of all, don't restart the computer if you haven't already! That'll just make things get deeper into your system.



Here's my trifecta for cleaning a system:

AVG Antivirus (I think they still have a free version)
Spybot Search and Destroy
Lavasoft Adaware

Download all three of those and install them.

Then start by looking through your system configuration for anything odd. Do this by going to Start -> Run, then type msconfig in the box. Go to the startup tab and look for anything weird, or anything that doesn't have a name. Uncheck those items so they don't load at startup.

Then run each of the programs listed above to see what they turn up with. Use them to clean the system. Keep running those until they don't find anything else. Sometimes once they've cleared up one bug it'll uncover another.

Once they show clean, reboot your computer into safe mode (usually by hitting F8 while it's rebooting to get the system menu). In safe mode it won't load up a lot of the system stuff so things will look weird, but because lots of things aren't loaded that usually are, you can get things cleaner. Run the three again to make sure there's nothing lurking around.

Reboot as normal, and then make sure you have all the security updates installed on your computer. And run the programs one more time to double-check everything.

Hope that helps!

 

Don, I did both things superantispyware and vundofix, It took care of some thing I did not know about.... But it did not remove the XP08 stuff

? anything else I can try? Again Thanks, Bill



Mike Thanks, I have AVG, I will try the others also.

 

Try going into safe mode then run the scans again..

These things are pretty tough to get rid of..

One other program to try is smitfraudfix_dot_exe which is for this type of bug. Run this under safe mode also.

If that does not work download a program called combofix_dot_exe and run that in safe mode.. This program has a warning that data could be deleted, but I have never had a problem..

 

Thanks Don! and Mike and Virto!! Got rid of it! went to safe mode and did all the other things.... But I still had to redo my computer. Just put it back to factory specs... I lost some things, thats OK though, just a bunch of junk anyways saved my pic's to a disk first! worked Good for someone who knows nothing about puters

Again Thanks for all the Help!

Bill

 

Sorry we didn't get it without a wipe. They can be real buggers sometimes, and no matter how much experience people have working on cases like this, it's always harder to diagnose and resolve without the machine in front of us.

Glad to know you're back up and clean, hope you didn't lose too much.

 

Bill,

Good to see your back up and running..

I was waiting for you to reply after trying the last options.. I was going to offer to have you call me and I could have walked you deleting the files..

It is probably better that you did the factory restore, because sometimes you think you have then cleaned out, but they come back after rebooting a few times..

Don't forget to install a spyware blocker like Spybot so you remain clean..

I recommend spybot and spywareblaster... Both are free/Donation ware programs that work great together..

 

saves ya the time searching for it.....