A new virus/Spyware record? (1 Viewer)

[Ryan-G]

A friend of mine who doesn't know much about computers asked me to look at the computer his college age daughter and high school age son use. Apparently they've been complaining about it being really slow, and "The keyboard not working" and other problems. He's computer illiterate and needed a hand. Since my semester's over I fit it in.

After 1 hour I managed to start the computer, and install Adaware, and disable the 25 useless startup items. After 4 hours I've managed to run Adaware and Antivir.

At this moment, I am at 916 instances of Spyware/Malware including a who's who of major spyware programs, and 211 viruses/worms/trojans.

This is getting scary, because I'm going to have to do another spyware/virus pass with each of those before running MS's and PCWorlds anti-spyware apps to finish the job.

The really bad part? As I'm typing this Anti-vir is only at 87% complete. It's jumped 120 between 60% and 87%.

 

[Ricardo C]

Tell the son to lay off the net porn and warez, and watch the Spyware never return

Yeah, I'm joking... Partly.

 

[Kevin Hewell]

Make sure you put Spywareblaster on the computer once you get everything sorted and make sure you impress upon them to run these programs regularly and keep them updated.

You might also want to download Spybot Search and Destroy as well. It picks up some things that Ad-Aware misses.

 

[SethH]

Also, use the TrendMicro online virus scanner in addition to whatever you're using. Different anti-virus products often catch different things, so in a situation like this it's probably good to have a second one run.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

That doesn't even come close to a record. My 22 year old niece asked me to look at her PC that was running slow. Using various tools, I found over 10,000 instances of infection, between viruses and spyware. She wasn't running any anti-virus, spyware or firewall software, and had installed every toolbar and music sharing program imaginable. Since her CD drive no longer worked, I couldn't take the easy way out and just reformat and reinstall the operating system, either. It took me a week to get everything cleaned off.

With the cleaned PC, she also received freeware to protect the PC and instructions on "safe computing" practices.

 

[mattCR]

Worst I've ever seen was over 30,000 objects in Ad-Aware and a few hundred viruses.

To go along with their boatload upon boatload of BearShare porn.

 

[Joe D]

I really feel sad for people that don't know how to operate a computer.

Maintaining a PC isn't hard, it's just a matter of what programs to use and when to use them.

 

[Jay Taylor]

If I were in this situation I would back up my documents, format the hard drives & reinstall Windows & all needed programs.

But then many people can’t do this for various reasons such as not having a Windows installation disk, a restore disk, or installation disks for their applications.

 

[Ryan-G]

Thanks for the advice all, I'll get that stuff on there, along with a copy of Zonealarm.

Jay,

That's kinda in the position I'm in, It's a compaq with one of those partitions that contains the reinstall software, which is where the second 100 viruses turned up so I'm pretty sure it's a loss. I doubt the file integrity is good enough for me to use it anymore.

 

[Todd H]

I've run across a few that had over a thousand before.

With that many I usually just wipe the drive and start over.