Need help w/viruses in chest

[lisak]

Hi, I'm running a Dell desktop w/Windows 32 and got a notice from Avast of 5 viruses. I put them in the chest (see attached screen shot).

The computer has been crashing a lot (BSOD and outright not booting to Windows) so I'm trying to proceed. Problem is I'm not sure whether I should download/run the programs in your main post or do I wait further instructions.

I am a daily user of CCleaner. I also ran MBAM and it found PUP.MyWebsearch (Quarantined and deleted).

Please let me know what I should do next. Do I delete the chest files? Post logs? Thank you!
Lisa

[DavidR]

You have run TDSSKiller at some point 24/9/1012 and these are files in its quarantine.

You should have uninstalled TDSSKiller after the infection was clear, this I believe would have removed the unencrypted files in quarantine...

So yes you can remove those files from the avast chest.

[lisak]

Thank you David, I'll go ahead and delete those files if I can figure out how. As for the PUP file should I run another program to see if it's really deleted? And do you recommend any of the other programs instead of CCleaner?

I still need to read "how to keep this from happening again" in the top post. I think I forgot to turn my firewall back on after installing something. Now it's back up.

What do you think of Auslogics Registry Cleaner or defragmenter? are they OK?

[DavidR]

Open the avast virus chest and select the files you want, right click and select delete.

The PUP or rather MyWebsearch, is a toolbar commonly installed as a result of either thinking it would benefit you (rather than the makers) or as an add-on with an application/utility you installed.

How to stop it happening again, don't take things at face value if offered a toolbar/application that is going to improve your life/searches, etc. ask yourself why they would offer this for free and do some searches on the product/toolbar. When installing applications, watch the screens as they are displayed, check what is checked/ticked by default and do you want it.

Personally ccleaner is fine, it has a registry cleaner that isn't too aggressive so is a little safer than some others, but all registry cleaners can impact on your system. Many of the registry cleaners have settings to backup the changes so that they can be reversed. But you would have to first bump into a problem and understand that it is a registry problem and then which registry backup to restore.

When using registry cleaners you really need to know a bit about the registry to understand what it is offering to remove and how that may impact on your system, most people haven't got that experience, so they are trusting blindly in the application.

So hopefully you are getting the general idea that messing with the registry can seriously impact on your system.

[lisak]

I'm not sure whether you're saying it's OK to use the registry cleaner as long as you always back it up first (which I do) or if I should avoid it.

I think I need to get the paid version of Avast so I have more protection. I am a firm believer in Avast as it was the only AV to prevent a problem that a lot of my friends had a few years back...it was a lifesaver. Am I asking for trouble by not upgrading, if I do a lot of online shopping?

My main reason for using CCleaner and Auslogics is to speed up the computer. If it doesn't really help then I guess it's not worth the risk.

I am considering buying a tablet (and getting the mobile version of Avast installed). But Android is a whole new ballgame. Is it safe to use yet or are there more viruses on it vs. Windows?

[DavidR]

Having empty registry entries, which is what most cleaners are going to be clearing up doesn't have that much impact on speed. So all I'm saying is you have to air on the safe side and modification of the registry comes with risks and it is about limiting those risks and ccleaners registry clean is much less aggressive than others out there.

I don't know if you have a backup and recovery strategy (back it up if you don't want to lose it), I use hard disk imaging software (run weekly) that makes an exact copy of my drive/partition and saved to a second hard disk. Any serious issue and I can recover the last backup in less than 30 minutes.

What would have a greater impact is ensuring the hard disk isn't badly fragmented (but you don't have to do that too frequently). Don't run unnecessary applications on boot or in the background, many applications when installed want to run on boot, typically media player, which you don't need until playing media files.

Have you got enough RAM if not an increase in RAM is one of the upgrades that will improve overall system performance as it isn't constantly swapping data out to the pagefile.sys (hard disk, a bottle neck). Check task manager and see what is taking up the greatest amount of RAM and do they really need to be running.

Tablets and Android is like any other system keep it up to date and exercise the same care/caution you would on your desktop (backup data, etc. etc. Android is obviously talking a larger share of the tablet market, so it will start to get attention. Android malware is still relatively small when compared to windows, but that will gradually increase.

[lisak]

Thanks! Is that imaging program free? I do backup my personal files but if I had to recover I think they charge a hefty fee to get a recovery disk...but at least I'm backing up.

I do that system snapshot by Windows where you can rollback to the last saved version...never used it tho.

I do think my hard drive is getting fragmented but the defragmenter can't work b/c the disk is too full...so I have to do something pretty soon with all my photos....

Are external hard drives safer if they're portable or doesn't it make a diff? I need to get one soon.

[DavidR]

No the one I have was a paid product (but very old), but there are 'free hard disk imaging software' applications, try a google search for that term and see what it turns up.

It does depend on what version of windows you have as to how effective/useful the backup and restore is. I have win7 on my netbook and that is meant to be reasonable and I use that on it, but I have never had to restore so I cant speak for its ease of use and effectiveness.

External drives portable or otherwise aren't a problem, the only real issue is the type of connection, USB2 would just take longer to save and restore the drive image. I have a second HDD on this XP Pro desktop so saving and restoration of a drive image is very reasonable.