Do I have a virus?

sjt269

sjt269

sjt269

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11 Dec 2004
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Really not been my week, this. :o



PC has been acting up for ages (mostly games refusing to work, sometimes arndomly restarting on the desktop or in Firefox), but I just put it down to occasionally quirks and compatability issues. I just had the bright idea to scan for malware/viruses, and so I turned on Spybot, to be greeted with an error message along the lines of 'Spybot.exe has been changed. Spybot.exe will not change itself, and so we advise that you do a scan for adware and malware immediately'


Fine, I think. I open up Ad-Aware (don't trust Spybot if it's been changed) and do a scan. 5 critical errors are detected, then when I'm not looking, it gives me a BSOD, and the words 'The system has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer'. Had this 3 times with Ad-Aware, and once during an AVG scan. There is more writing, but the system restarts too quickly for me to read it. On one restart, I immediately got confronted by a little error message telling me that I have a minute to save everything, since the computer is about to restart. Again. :o


The last time I had an error like that, it was a pretty bad virus, well over a year ago. Have I ended up with another one? :(



Thanks
tTz
 
From your description it could well be a virus. But if you add all your symptoms up it could also be a memory issue, in the past Spybot has done that to me when i have pushed my ram to far. So the question is, are you overclocked and if you are post up your speck and settings.
 
No, totally stock speeds atm. I gave up overclocking this rig when I realised that it won't go too high, especially in the warmer summer months. Looks like it's a virus then.


The question now is, how do I get rid of it? :o
 
killer_uk said:
Which AV do you use?
Click to expand...


AVG Free



Eliot said:
is the pc semi usabe when u are logged on, i.e. do you think you could configue the pc to go into safe mode etc
Click to expand...


Yeah, it seems to be entirely stable for normal browsing and stuff, it's just when I attempt to run a virus scan (or a PC game, though that may be unconnected) that it crashes. Like I say, there have been a few desktop crashes, but they were few and far between.
 
I've not had much experience with AVG, but I would suggest downloading the trial versions of either Nod32 or Kaspersky - both are arguably the best AVs there are.

NOD32

Kaspersky

Try to scan with one of them and see if it comes up with anything.
 
I saw a little more of the/an error message I got when it restarted while playing KOTOR. Unsure if this is anything to do with a virus, but it looked like the same message. In capital letters under the bit I have already mentioned, it said:

DEVICE_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL


No idea if that's relevant, I just thought I'd post it in case it was. Looking at those other antivirus softwares now, thanks.
 
Suggest you try this in Safe Mode. Recently found a virus on an old-ish PC on our network. AVG would detect it & attempt to heal/delete but system kept on being reinfected in Normal Mode :mad:
 
Okay, ta for that, I'll give it a go (as soon as I discover how to purposefully restart in safemode...). Doing a NOD32 scan atm, so I'll see what it finds (if anything). :)
 
tTz said:
Okay, ta for that, I'll give it a go (as soon as I discover how to purposefully restart in safemode...). Doing a NOD32 scan atm, so I'll see what it finds (if anything). :)
Click to expand...
Hit/hold F8 before Windows loading screeny appears, think around quick blank screen just after POST :D
 
turn off system restore, install windows defender and nod32, should clear up the baddies :)

use dial-a-fix to repair system files after you've done full scans
 
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