Parents pc is poorly

Sharpz · 16 Aug 2008 at 00:45

Soooo.. my dumb mother was browsing her emails and downloaded an E-card from a random person and its infected her computer.

Symptoms :-

Constantly changing Wallpaper. Displays "your computer maybe infected with malware"
Hangs at startup (sometimes), have to go into setup and exit
Printer stoped working (Printer spooler not working) gone into services and it seems fine.
Will not let me download and install any software (says the installer is missing)

i have tried running spybot search and destroy, its removed some but the problems are still there.
I have ran AVG anti virus, its not found anything.

Any help will be appreciated.

Monkeynut · 16 Aug 2008 at 00:54

Try scanning in safe mode. Sometimes you can catch more badware that way.

swinnie · 16 Aug 2008 at 01:01

1. Download, install and run SUPERAntiSpyware
2. Try an online Anti-Virus Scanner, such as this one

Failing that I'd personally reinstall Windows completely, mind you, if it was me, I would have done a complete reinstall by now. I can have windows back up and running quicker than I could run Spyware and Anti-Virus Programs.

Phil2008 · 16 Aug 2008 at 01:10

swinnie said:
1. Download, install and run SUPERAntiSpyware
2. Try an online Anti-Virus Scanner, such as this one

Failing that I'd personally reinstall Windows completely, mind you, if it was me, I would have done a complete reinstall by now. I can have windows back up and running quicker than I could run Spyware and Anti-Virus Programs.

Your a wise man,,., I cant be bothered trying to fix software probs, i just do a reinstall too.

GtScotty · 16 Aug 2008 at 03:04

backup what you need and reformat

Brian Stuart · 16 Aug 2008 at 09:32

GtScotty said:
backup what you need and reformat

+1

EsaT · 16 Aug 2008 at 14:09

HijackThis might show something...
http://www.merijn.org/programs.php
Then again it's equally probable that PC is so full of bloated shovelware checking ever process would take hours...

GtScotty said:
backup what you need and reformat

Documents, images and such data should never be on same HDD partition as OS/software so that it can be easily overrun if OS craps out or gets full of malware.

geekyEd · 16 Aug 2008 at 17:21

another vote for a reinstall and tell ** dad to stop going on dodgey websites and downloads carp from them !

On the new build put as much "protection" on it as you can

lamboman · 16 Aug 2008 at 17:25

s1ick said:
another vote for a reinstall and tell ** dad to stop going on dodgey websites and downloads carp from them !

On the new build put as much "protection" on it as you can

Yep, always use protection!