pest trap

judder · 26 Jan 2007 at 00:15

I don't know if this is the correct place for this post, but... what on earth is pest trap and how do you get rid of it? i've just switched on my computer after some weeks away (during which a neighbour borrowed it for work) to find it claiming that it's infected with something or other and something called pest trap seems to have installed itself. Please help.

judder · 26 Jan 2007 at 07:23

I have Sophos anti-virus and Ad-Aware spyware. I have run both and deleted everything dodgy they detect.

The annoying pop-up, telling me that my computer is infected goes away. However, when I restart my machine the wretched thing comes back! I notice that I deleted something called winstall, but then found it again (in the same place from which I'd deleted it) after the restart.

What is this thing and please help me to get rid of it!

judder · 26 Jan 2007 at 12:45

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I'll try the non-reformatting step first (as I'm not a computer whizz). But, if I do have to reformat, how do I do that? Doesn't that completely wipe the computer of all knowledge of everything it has ever known? Thanks again.

judder · 29 Jan 2007 at 00:36

Ok. Thanks for all the suggestions so far, including the neighbour beating. He delivered a case of nice S.African wine for the trouble. Anyway, I've tried everything mentioned above apart from reformatting (and my final point below). The trouble files seem to get deleted and all is fine until I connect to the internet at which point I get the bubble telling me that the computer is infected etc... One link I accessed said to deleted certain registry files, "HKEY....". How do I find these HKEY files? I'm trying to put off reformatting until the last moment (though I'm sure it will be good experience for me to do). Thanks again.