Viral Infection

My computer has been a little buggy over the weekend. It took a while to load up and whenever I open Internet Explorer, I will be directed to an antispyware site. A rogue antispyware. It gives popups about your computer being infected and you need to download antispyware programs to get rid of it. I know they are false stuff and cancelled everything, but it slowly made its way into my system anyway. So, here a page that loads everytime I open Internet Explorer and it automatically downloads spywares. And they in return download more. Never ending chain...

My quest started on Friday 11.58pm. My initial response was to reformat harddisk. Actually, 5 people told me to do so over the next few days. I was really tempted to but I took the short cut and decided to attack the virus/spyware manually. (Short cut coz I didn't want to go through all the backing up, file transfers, reinstalling everything...). I talked to Raj the expert and downloaded a few antivirus/antispyware programs to hope to get rid of it, but this little bugger is dodgy (wow, aussie words) and reinstalls itself everytime I restart the computer. I gave up.

My next step was to go search the world wide web for more information about how to get rid of it. It really helps when you know what to look for. The Net is both blessing and a pain. Anyway, after searching a few websites, taking down notes, experimenting on my comp, I finally deleted the suspected files manually from my sacred Windows folder.

Lo and Behold... Them popups no bothering me anymore. I checked the time, it was 2am Tuesday.

I restarted my computer just to make sure. A few times. I was happy.

Now, I am feeling sick in the gut, lethargic, muscle ache and back pain. I think I caught a virus.



I'll just post up the irritating file name and what I did. Go google to see full instructions.

1. Turn off systemrestore
2. Restart in safe mode
3. Delete the following files. All these files were found in my Windows/system32 folder:
regperf.exe
simpole.tlb
dcomcfg.exe
hp???.tmp
ld???.tmp
stdole3.tlb
(can't remember what else...)
4. Delete some things from the registry regarding these files
5. Restart
6. Change homepage before opening Internet Explorer
7, 8, 9, & 10. Restart to make sure.