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[Xiaoding]

    A few people have mailed me to ask how I got rid of this thing, here is my reply to them, in the hope of helping others:

    I never did get rid of it, I did a system restore from a month back.

Try erasing your hosts file, that's one thing I didn't try.  I found some
hidden files on my drive by looking in DOS mode, that means I had a
rootkit...don't know if the rootkit causes this or not.  Avast did not detect the rootkit.

     I have come to the conclusion that virus scanners, adware scanners,
etc, are useless.  Every year the scanners get "better
and
better", and every year there are more and more viruses and infections
and hijackers, etc.  Clearly, the "better and better" scanners suck.  They
are simply wrong headed in their entire approach.  Being able to identify six million viruses is not very helpful to someone who has the six millionth and first.  In addition, I have found only one scanner capable of detecting rootkit viruses...and it's not for beginners.

I would suggest doing a complete re-install, wipe your OS partition clean.
Then get Winpatrol and Winsonar.  They don't look for viruses that are
already on your system, they stop any malware from installing itself to
begin with.  That's the future of EFFECTIVE anti-virus software.    It
would be nice if some AV company adopted this approach, not to mention in their best interest.

Oh, and use a firewall.

Xin

Xin

[bob3160]

Xiaoding

I never did get rid of it, I did a system restore from a month back

If what you had was any good, a Systen Restore will not get rid of it.
System restore doesn't delete every thing on your computer and put it back the way it was 1 month ago. That's not the way System Restore works.
Now if you had told me that you had an Image of your system from a month ago and knew that last month your system was clean of any infection and you then said I formatted my harddrive and installed the Image, then maybe you would have made sense.
The only good advice you mentioned was the fact of needing a Firewall.

[Eddy]

So you never read THIS PAGE. If you did and followed the steps there, you would have been able to completely clear your system from all malware. It was your lack of knowledge who prevented you from getting rit of it. Be a sports and don't blame it on the applications.

[Xiaoding]

So you never read THIS PAGE <http://members.home.nl/edeijl/acred/cleaning.htm>. If you did and followed the steps there, you would have been able to completely clear your system from all malware. It was your lack of knowledge who prevented you from getting rit of it. Be a sports and don't blame it on the applications.

No, I read that page, tried most of it.  It was a dead end, at least it semed so to me.  Safe mode had no effect on any of the scans.  Two other people as well can't get rid of this thing following that pages directions, which, incidently, makes no mention of this problem.  I find the claim that it removes ALL malware specious in the least.

     As for blaming the application...I quote:

   "The file system protection ensures that no virus will be started on the computer. It offers a wide range of settings - e.g. it is possible to specify that files will be scanned during copying, or that the scanning will include files with given set of extensions only."

This from Avast.  I fail to see how scanning incoming files will prevent virus infection, since it is, and always will be, impossibe to know all virus's present on the Earth.  It is an approach doomed to failure from the start.  I don't mean to crtisize Avast, they all do it.  







If what you had was any good, a Systen Restore will not get rid of it.
System restore doesn't delete every thing on your computer and put it back the way it was 1 month ago. That's not the way System Restore works.
Now if you had told me that you had an Image of your system from a month ago and knew that last month your system was clean of any infection and you then said I formatted my harddrive and installed the Image, then maybe you would have made sense.
The only good advice you mentioned was the fact of needing a Firewall.


 Ah, that's what I did, an image of a month ago.  I am not familiar with system Restore, and I don't trust it.


Thanks, all, for your help.  This is my last word on the subject.



ps: except for this one.

[bob3160]

There is a lesson to be learned from this post!
If the person who asks for help already has all the answers and already knows how to fix every thing, then we get to excersise our fingers for our own amusement just as the person making the post exersided his fingers for his own amusement.
This can sometimes also be called and excersise in futility.

[Eddy]

If you have a image you don't need to format. Placing back the image will overwrite the format.

No, I read that page, tried most of it.  It was a dead end, at least it semed so to me.

You just tried, and did not do it all. That is a major difference! If you look at the statistics you can see already thousends of people have cleaned their system with those instructions. Noone was not be able to do so. Myself have cleaned hundreds of systems with those directions. Never failed.