Virus problems

Knights,

I am having problems with viruses ... at least I think that is what the problem is. I ran Norton Anti-Virus 2002 (with latest definitiions) yesterday and discovered that my computer had been infected with a backdoor trojan, as well as some sort of "exception" virus. I deleted the infected files (shellex.exe and one other ending in .bj) and the system now tests clean.

However, stuff keeps disappearing. This morning, my media player would not work because it was no longer installed. A word to the wise ... the XP media player is not available for download. I had to reinstall XP. So I reinstalled and ran Norton AV 2002 again, and found no infection.

Then I tried to put the volume control onto the taskbar, and was informed that the volume control program was not installed and should be downloaded from Microsoft. Now, as far as I can see, the volume control program is not available from MS. I can control the volume at my speakers or inside the control panel, but cannot do it from the taskbar (and I could do so yesterday). Any ideas?

NAV insists the system is clean. I am about to start getting medieval on this machine.


[AK]Abaddon

A backdoor trojan virus demolished my OS last week, so I feel your pain. I thought that trojans were benign, merely providing a hacker with access to your computer should it be found hackable during various port scans. However, it did do significant damage to my OS, and I doubt that anyone ever actually hacked into my computer. I got rid of the virus fairly prompty, but the damage was already done. I could barely run any programs; I would get error after error regarding .dll problems. I could only use Windows Explorer occasionally, so backing up my system was a very time consuming and frustrating ordeal. Most times, I would click on My Computer and immediately get an error that would force me to reboot (which was a problem in itself; due to a faulty motherboard, anytime I would reboot using the restart button, the monitor would just go off and the computer would stall. The same would happen if I completely turned it off, then turn it on again. I had to actually turn off the power to my computer for 15 seconds, then hit the power switch in order to boot up again. Very annoying!).

Since reformatting and installing the new motherboard and XP, it's been smooth sailing. I think the only solution for you is a format, Ab.

Hey Palooka,

I wound up formatting my drives again and starting anew. Things are running much smoother now. BTW, I installed the NTFS on both my drives ... including the startup disk. That's a gamble, but I think it is a little bit faster. WinXP has the capability to boot from its install CD and repair a damaged installation ... which is what I will do if my system ever crashes too hard to boot.

[AK]Abaddon

NTFS is much better than Fat32, anyway.

The XP CD makes reformatting and reinstalling Windows very convenient. This weekend, I reformatted just for fun, and I had everything back up and running in record time, mostly thanks to XP's quick format. No more year-long formats and lost, unmarked boot-up disks. :)

I was never a user of NT ... until I upgraded to 2000 a couple of months ago. I have to say, the management utilities in this XP corporate edition are very nice. I like the partition controls ... however, there's some very powerful settings buried in the menus on this thing. I gotta be careful that I don't FUBAR something while tweaking around with it. :-)

One of the unfortunate (and unforseen) side effects of my recent upgrade to WinXP was that Norton Antivirus 2001 does not work. I shelled out the $39 bucks today at lunch for Norton 2002. After the $20 upgrade rebate it will only be a net cost of $20, but sheesh, I only bought 2001 like 6 months ago!

Norton has caught quite a few viruses and worms over the course of those 6 months so it's money well spent. Having used McAfee as well, I'd recommend Norton for ease of use and it's LiveUpdate automatic downloads. Real nice product.

after i discovered norton products was behind some problems i was having with macromedia products, i immediately uninstalled their software. not very good uninstallers either; left lots of files.

i don't like how norton modifies windows system files during installation and without notification to the user. i'm rather anal towards what goes in my windows directory.

palook, how do you format windows xp? i wasn't able to find any documentation about it in my copy of windows xp professional.

Just pop in the XP CD, make sure your CD-ROM drive is set to boot in your BIOS, and reboot your machine. Then, follow the directions for an XP install.