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Author Topic: Virus Prevents Avast from starting  (Read 7053 times)

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lettik

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Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« on: April 15, 2009, 05:03:24 PM »
Greetings all,

I am at an impasse with a virus I seem to have contracted. 

Yesterday, Avast alerted me a program was trying to shut it down, despite my efforts it succeeded.  My first response was to boot to safe mode.  However, my system can no longer boot to safe mode.  It just reboots when I try. 

So, I had to try and fix my system in standard mode.  Avast, Spybot, and HiJackThis cannot open, I get an error message saying "Invalid Win32 Application".  I downloaded and ran Avast cleaner tool, but it did not find anything.  I ran TrendMicro's online scanner but it crashes each time, in both IE and Firefox.

I downloaded a Bagle remover from Norton, but it did not find anything.  I tried a system restore, but it says it is unable to perform the restore, no matter what restore point I try. 

I have tried re-installing Avast, but receive the same error each time.  Ad-Aware simply will not run, it closes as soon as the splash screen starts.

So, I am not sure what to do next.  Any idea which virus disables antivirus, safe mode and system restore?  Is there another tool that can bypass the virus's defenses?  Please let me know what information I can provide to help.

My system:

Windows XP Pro (SP3 and up to date)
Avast 4 Home edition (Will gladly upgrade to pro if need be)

Any input is greatly appreciated
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Offline Eddy

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2009, 05:29:09 PM »
Get a live cd with a anti virus on it. (ofcourse with recent virus definitions)
Boot from it and run a full system scan.
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lettik

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2009, 05:36:01 PM »
Live CD as in a Linux Live CD?  Come to think of it, I haven't heard of a Windows Live CD...is there such a thing?

Thanks for the response!
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Offline Eddy

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2009, 05:41:13 PM »
Yes, can be a Linux cd. But there are also Windows Live cd's, like the avast bart cd, Barts PE and others.
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lettik

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2009, 05:47:20 PM »
Awesome, I am downloading UBCD4Win right now and will give it a shot.   I will post back the results, just to be thorough. Thank you very much
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Offline Eddy

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2009, 05:52:02 PM »
You're welcome. Good luck.
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alfainfo

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2009, 05:55:52 PM »
A very good Boot Cd with Antivirus is Avira Rescue System http://www.avira.com/en/support/support_downloads.html
I am regret that Alwill Software doesn't provide a similar system...
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Offline Eddy

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #7 on: April 15, 2009, 05:58:14 PM »
alfainfo, you are wrongly informed. Alwill does have something like that. It is the avast bart cd.
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alfainfo

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2009, 06:10:22 PM »
Ok, but Bart Cd is a pay version, Avira Rescue system is free....
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Offline Lisandro

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #9 on: April 16, 2009, 01:20:03 AM »
Quote from: alfainfo on April 15, 2009, 05:55:52 PM
I am regret that Alwill Software doesn't provide a similar system...
Me too... But they choose to do this way, a strong (and expensive) Bart CD compared to a scanner-only CD.
There are other options.
1. Avira (again).
2. Kaspersky
3. BitDefender
4. F-Secure
5. Dr. Web
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lettik

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #10 on: April 17, 2009, 12:14:50 AM »
I wanted to provide an update.  I ended up using the Kaspersky Rescue CD; I had a variant of the Bagle virus.

It removed the infected files and I was able to reinstall Spybot, I did that because Spybot does not require a reboot so I did a scan right away.  It removed the remaining problems.  I then reinstalled AVast and did a scan on reboot. 

My system is clean and running great.  Thanks again for the help; it saved me many hours of frustration.
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Offline Lisandro

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #11 on: April 17, 2009, 01:03:58 AM »
Bagle is very hard against avast installations...
Glad you've succeed ;)
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Offline Omid Farhang

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Re: Virus Prevents Avast from starting
« Reply #12 on: April 19, 2009, 04:26:40 PM »
Quote from: alfainfo on April 15, 2009, 05:55:52 PM
A very good Boot Cd with Antivirus is Avira Rescue System http://www.avira.com/en/support/support_downloads.html
I am regret that Alwill Software doesn't provide a similar system...

The best possible answer! my vote!
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