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[ninatoo]

I recently had a problem when my computer went haywire, screens popped up a gazillion times from just one click. Menus would not stay onscreeen. I lost internet connection. I tried to run AVG but it was impossible to get AVG to run all the way through a scan. I think whatever was wrong had disabled AVG and made it reboot. Bleh.

I realised right away that I had downloaded something from Yahoo Messenger accidentally (since it was the ONLY place I had been the night before where I do not go anymore). Also Yahoo Messenger turned itself on and started asking me repeatedly if I wanted to upgrade...a bit of a give-away. I had to uninstall all my Yahoo stuff, which was fine since I don't use it anymore anyway. That got rid of the pop up windows, but I thought...there might be something lurking.

Then I did a system restore, disk clean, a registry clean and finally a disk defrag and AVG ran all the way through...yay

BUT....it did not pick up anything. So I ran my Spybot program and IT found two instances of something called "Macro virus" I deleted them and everything seems fine.

While I love AVG, it obviously doesn't pick up everything. I don't think any program does. But since I knew there had to be something wrong, I was just determined to run whatever I could until I found it.

All seems okay now, thank goodness!

[Thrall]

Hi Ninatoo, nothing is perfect. We use MacAfee and Spybot, it´s worked well for many years, then suddenly this autumn trojans everywhere.
With the help of a colleague, we got rid of the trojans; fortunately I did not take up any offer to help me clear the problem on line.
In November and December we received credit card bills for lottery tickets in Britain and very expensive train tickets in Italy. All reimbursed by Visa, so we were relieved we kept an eye on our credit card bills........

Anyway, the conclusion again is: nothing is perfect, but the more alert you are, the less likely to be conned.

For those with similar trojans, the site to eradicate them is:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.php
otherwise known as "hijack-this"
and persevere. It took us a couple of hours to get rid of the beasts.

Guid hunting,

Thrall

[ASGROOMBRIDGE]

Wonderfull advice I am installing at the moment I have been unable to run my pictures file since McAfee sent an update to the computer. Have had problems uninstalling it. Fingers crossed AVG helps is it worth while buying the full programme?

Audrey

[StewL]

Hi Audrey
For whats its worth I think it is worth the buy, when I bought it I got two years "membership" and if I recall the full programme includes that anti spam thingo. But a couple of friends of mine have the free version and they are happy with that so it is really a matter of choice I suppose.

[ASGROOMBRIDGE]

Thank you,

regards from a cold wet Somerset
Audrey

[emanday]

Hi Ninatoo,

Unfortunately, These numpties who infect us with these viruses, etc... are getting better at setting them up to disable whatever anti-virus program you are running.

I've not heard of AVG being hit with this before, but one of the regular updates failed the other day and AVG wouldn't open at all. I ran a Restore System then uninstalled AVG, rebooted the system and reinstalled AVG and the updates ran OK. I don't know if this was caused by an attempt to "nobble" AVG, but I decided to take that route to try and stop any problems. Seems to have worked OK, but I'll be watching out for any such further problems from now on.

[ninatoo]

Hi emanday,

YEs I was aware that the hackers can the attack antivirus programs; that's why I got rid of Norton, as it was becoming a target for them....maybe it was the update though, as I do recall that the next time I got updates I had to give the AVG program permission to access the net as if it was new again, and there did seem to be a lot of new updates come through.

Nina

[StewL]

Since I got an update from AVG the other week I now have to restart my computer Something I didnt have to do before, but a couple of friends said they had to before Maybe I was lucky before
But I have got used to now, so not a problem, just do what I have to do and then reboot the thing. But I am not complaining at all. I did re-instal Spybot yesterday and found a lot of wee nasties, but what a palaver that was just installing it , then doing the scan, yikes

[ninatoo]

Stew, I think you can turn restart OFF in the options somewhere.

Spybot is famtastic. I also use adaware, but even that picked nothing up.

Nina