Need advice! The proper steps to get rid of a virus?

[billandopus]

My friend has a virus that she tells me has whacked her comp pretty good. She says she cannot access the internet which means she cannot take advantage of online virus scanning and innoculation. She seemingly cannot run her VirusScan as well. Of course, her not being that savvy has not made any rescue disks with her McAffee VirusScan and/or kept up with virus definitions - so that avenue seems to be useless.

So, i'm trying to think of a way to get rid of this virus. I haven't had the chance to see this comp yet - will be there tommorrow - but i've got a couple of ideas ... but i'm wondering if anyone here can shed some more light or give good advice on what to do or whether this idea(s) of mine should work ... here goes.

1- She's running 98 (she thinks) but hasn't made any bootdisks so I went to startdisk.com and downloaded their Ultimate bootdisk utility and created a bootdisk for her.

2- I also downloaded their complimentary DOS F-Prot virus freeware program on floppy to run after the Ultimate Bootdisk utility - to scan, identify and hopefully innoculate. Hopefully everything will be fine after this.

3- I thought about bringing my Norton AV rescue disks over but somewhere I read that this probably won't work since you have to use rescue disks created on that particular comp to be effective. True?

She reports that everytime she clicks on something a "smiley face" - or something to that effect - "winks" back at her like she's screwed. I actually laughed at this and thought it was funny. However, since she's a friend and has no clue what's going on she is asking for my help because I know something about comps. Well, I can't turn her down but I have to take time out of my life to get to her place (she better feed me!) and work on her computer.

Ahhh, I think i'm going to start telling people that I have no clue about computers. I ain't 24/7 tech support.

Anyways, anyone please let me know if i'm attacking this problem correctly or if i'm forgetting anything. I hoping that number 1 and 2 are the way to go considering her situation.

Thanks.

 

[tjll11a]

Maybe its one of those joke virus. They have stuff out there that does this kind of stuff. Does anyone want to get at her???


Might want to check all the startup perameters to see if anything weird is loading possibly.

For virus make sure you bring a good scanner on a boot disk

Hope that helps
Jason

 

[donna4456]

this may be a good time for your friend to learn to start backing up her data, for your time and her sake. you may just want to run fdisk/mbr three times on the hard drive then fdisk and then to unplug the unit and hold the power button in for 30 seconds to try and get it out of the cmos, but this will not get it out of the bios, thats my thought, but then again she could go out and buy a new vision of some virus s/w and boot it up with that. good luck

 

[billandopus]

Thanks for the replies.

This is a classic case where a computer neophyte only learns about what she should have done AFTER something bad has happened to her. After this she will certainly consistently update her virus definitions and be more careful opening up attachments and all that. But this won't help her now. As far as I can tell no one is out to get her.

I'm not competent/confident enough to try the fdisk mbr command ... so I will cross my fingers and hope that steps 1 and 2 will work out.

Anyone else?

 

[LevcoS]

This sounds like a case of w32/MBX or some variant. Do a search at any of the major virus protection websites, and you'll find tools and instructions for ridding her machine of it and recovering all possible data.

For example, try this link at NAV!

LevcoS

 

[edblor]

If she has the original Anti-Virus CD that came with her purchase, it should be a bootable CD! Boot from it and run the Virus program from there!!

Good luck!

Edblor

 

[SemperFi]

Make sure to write protect the floppy before putting it into her computer. I have learned from experience.