Hope someone can help......please

[Umaxman]

My in-laws are having a problem with a virus or spyware?
They are running win98SE ( I know but they don't like change and it works for them ) They have the avast home edition and is up to date and they run Ad-ware SE also up to date. The problem is they post a lot on a hobby forum and have for years, but now when they try to post something..a link is added to the post..always a different link. They have not clicked it to see what it is.
Avast is not seeing anything and ad-ware SE does not pick up any spy ware and if it does they get rid of it. But the link problem is still there as are some pop ups.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also sometimes when Avast is scanning it seems to scan and then scan the same files over again and takes hours to run?

[Spiritsongs]

  From your description it's difficult to know if your in-laws
     are having a problem !? You say "try to post"; you mean
     what they are posting in that forum does NOT get into the
     forum ? Where, specifically, and when, does this "link" get
     added to the post ? Could they copy down what the link
     says & relay it to you to be posted here ? Having advised
     on Ad-aware Support forums, I know "critical objects" it
     finds are NOT always so easily removed. My advise would
     be to post a "Full System Scan" setting Ad-aware SE logfile
     at : http://castlecops.com/forum142.html and let the
     experts there provide advise. Hopefully, your in-laws have
     installed the "new" Ad-aware SE 1.06 !?

[FreewheelinFrank]

Hello Umaxman,

As Spiritsongs mentioned, it's not exactly clear what you problem is, but here are some things you can try:

Have you done a boot time scan with avast?

Right click the avast! globe and select Start avast! Antivirus.

avast! will do a memory scan: if it find the worm in memory, it will prompt you to do a boot time scan: accept this and reboot.

If avast! doesn't find anything in memory, schedule a boot time scan. (Click the button at the top left of the avast! silver console and select Schedule boot time scan from the drop-down menu.)

You will need a firewall to prevent reinfection. Download a free one - before you do your boot scan (Zone Alarm is most user friendly.)

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp?lid=zadb_zadown

After you have done your boot scan, install the firewall before you reconnect to the internet.

Unfortunately, one anti-spyware product does not catch 100% of spyware. You will need to run several regularly. Here are some reliable free anti-spyware scanners:

Spybot Search & Destroy: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/
MS AntiSpyware: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=321CD7A2-6A57-4C57-A8BD-DBF62EDA9671&displaylang=en
Yahoo! Anti-Spy: http://toolbar.yahoo.com/
X-Cleaner Free: http://www.xblock.com/download-freeware.php

Also run Ewido anti-Trojan program as a double check:

http://www.ewido.net/en/

I also suggest you switch to Firefox which is a more secure browser:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

If you try all of this and you still have a problem, you can submit a HijackThis log for us to look at, but that may not be necessary.

Try the above and if you still have a problem come back and ask for details about HijackThis!

[DavidR]

The boot-time scan is only available in NT based OS and not win98, this is a limitation of win98 not avast. So an update to XP would give them a very useful tool in their armoury, a boot-time scan before windows starts up.

If you can't or won't update ensure that all available windows updates for win98 are installed, even though MS no longer has official or extended support for win98 there have been a few security updates released.

Ensure that you have the latest version of IE that can be supported on win98 which is IE6 SP1. However, I would try to wean them off IE and on to firefox which is less susceptible to adware/spyware, etc.

[Umaxman]

Thanks for the info... The forum is simular to this one and when you type in a message and preview it before you post, a link appears at the bottom of the message.
The win98se is updated as well as ad-ware se and they do have zone  alarm installed and running.The link is different every time.
Here is a copy of the link....
Link: http://boyzone.freeloadmp3.com/
Like I said some times it is different..
I do run XP pro but they like win98se and they are elderly and do not like change  for the fear they won't know how do do anything... I know but try to tell them this isn't easy.
I will try another adware program.