am I beating a dead trojan horse here?

[Q]

This is just weird.
On my 98 machine, with Norton 2001, I may or may not have a trojan.

For no apparent reason I lost my volume control in my task bar. No luck trying to put it back. So I decided to run Norton. Sure enough it said I had Backdoor autopndr. There were originally 7 infected files. Norton deleted 4 of them and could not delete or quarrantine the other 3. I went to the symantec website and d/led the removal tool. It said I did not have backdoor autopndr on my system. hmmmm. So I ran virus scan again, just to make sure and it said I still had 3 infected files. Back to the symantec website... I followed the instructions to manuallly remove the offending registry keys. 15 fewer registry keys later, I still don't know if I got a horse galloping around in there or not. The website virus san says no. The removal tool says no. The Norton on my system says yes.
How do I know if I have it or not?
How do I find the little puke that wrote this pos so I can stab him in the face with a pair of scissors?

 

[Bubba]

i couldn't find a thing even searching google

this is a good place to get software and they have some free antivirus programs that look interesting: http://www.webattack.com/freeware/security/fwvirus.shtml

i would tend to believe the software more than the removal tool

 

[Q]

Well. I already have Norton on there, so I can't install any other av software unless I completely remove Norton.
I'll check out that website though, thanks.

 

[Q]

OMG!!!!

Unlike virus and worm attacks, which can be recovered from with clean up tools albeit with almost inevitable data loss, many Trojans can remain undetectable thus giving total control of your PC to a hacker. Even if you can clean them up then there will be a difficulty in ever trusting the integrity of ANY file on your system. If they attained administrator level access then they could have modified any of your system files, or replaced your whole shell, and you would be none the wiser. You also have a problem with restoring from backup since you cannot possible know what else may have been inserted. It's rebuild from scratch time -

 

[Bubba]

Before you reformat, try one of those free AV programs and see if it can do anything. You should be able to put more than one AV program on the system at a time. I used to have both Norton and McAfee on my system at the same time. You might even try downloading the trial version of McAfee and see if it can remove it. If you decide to try one of these, be sure to download any updates of the virus definitions to make sure they are current. The way I see it you don't have a lot to lose by trying it if you are thinking of reformatting.

 

[Huge]

How do I find the little puke that wrote this pos so I can stab him in the face with a pair of scissors?

I'll hold him down and you can shiskabob away!

 

[Q]

Re: Re: am I beating a dead trojan horse here?

I'll hold him down and you can shiskabob away!

OK!!!

All kidding aside, if I ever met one of these smart ass little script kiddies face to face I'd take him apart with my bare hands.

....AND I would LIKE it....alot

 

[Bubba]

here is what i do. i have 2 hard drives installed. i have a clean copy of my os ghosted on the second drive. if my first drive gets screwed up, i just use ghost and restore my system in less than 5 minutes. it might be something to consider. also i make the ghost backup file read only. i believe you can find norton system works cheap that has ghost at 9software.com

 

[fury]

Back up your documents and downloads and reinstall. in the future, make a note of every download and every program install as it happens, and make a note of when you start noticing certain problems. It's a lot of work but it makes it 10x easier to fix a problem or at least find out what's causing it.

 

[Q]

Back up.....what??
This fucker's in there...and I don't know where.
It's in 3 files, but I don't know which 3.
....what if I back up an infected file?

It took me a whole year to rebuild my MP3 collection
and now I gotta trash the whole thing

 

[Bubba]

you really should consider trying a different virus program as i suggested

here is another anti-virus program: http://67.105.126.34/datanet/inoculateit.htm

norton isn't the only virus software on the planet, many people use 2 or 3 of them

 

[fury]

Sometimes norton isn't correct, too.

 

[Q]

Ya know, I was thinking about that. I mean so far, other than losing my volume control, nothing bad is happening.....but I don't really want to take a chance of spreading this damn thing around, if it is in there.

 

[Bubba]

Just don't transfer files from one computer to the other if you are worried about that. It wouldn't hurt a thing to give one of these other programs a try. What have you got to lose? It's not like they will delete everything.

 

[trinity1]

I don't know if you still have the problem Miss Q, but the best Anti-Trojan program I found through reviews and personal experience is TDS-3 Anti-Trojan Suite. The link lets you download free for a 30 day period.Lots of settings, maybe too many, but download it, let it run and hopefully you can solve or at least identify where the trojans are located. Good luck and let us know how you are making out!

 

[Q]

I GOT IT OUT THIS MORNING!!!!!!!

I was cruising around the symantec website this morning and I discovered a step I missed in the manual removal instructions, so I did that step, ran a scan....and the demon was exorcized from mah computah....

 

[Q]

Also, I was poking around HWC too and stumbled on this dandy link from Bink http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
I've heard of it before but I never bothered to check it out...It's AdAware. There was a big ol pile of crap hiding on my HDD. I ran that thing after I did the virus scan, just to see if it picked up anything.

 

[Bubba]

yeah, i've been using adaware for a long time. my advice is to make any file/download that you are concerned about losing read only or back them up to cdr.