My Experience in a PC Trojan Virus Hell!

[Craig Mattice]

PERSONAL NOTE: I hate to share bad news or experiences but this is a SERIOUS exception to my rule so pay attention!

You know how you "occasionally" will have those pesky computer hiccups and residual challenges that seem to disrupt different performances of your computer? You know the anxiety, fear, trepidation, and apprehension experienced when things "just don't seem to run right?" Well, sit back, grab a fresh cup of coffee and let me share with you my "30 Days of PC Trojan Virus Hell!"

It all started simply enough, yes, PC Tools Spyware Doctor was the first to recognize and quarantine a Trojan virus. Then very soon after, McAfee Security captured it again and quarantined the culprit. I was able to remove it from the computer with McAfee but I could not remove or delete it from the quarantine of Spyware Doctor. I even enlisted the online support of Spyware Doctor and completed an elaborate procedural process to try and remove it, which appeared to solve the problem. Ahhh! Relief! Another sick attack on my computer averted. Hmmmm! So I thought!

Quietly, little hiccups began to happen with easy enough repairs using Windows XP tools. However, every time I would solve one day's problems a whole new set would occur, seemingly unrelated. I continued on this "recognize>diagnose>verify>repair" mode for almost three weeks. Each experience becoming more and more complex to diagnose and evaluate, much less solve. I learned later these occurrences were becoming cumulative in nature causing more and more problems, compounding on the previous problems, solved or not. I said to myself, "Holy CRAP! What's this all about???"

I was already spending countless hours in this "survival" process making little, then no headway. I don't know, it just had to wait a bit as I was preparing to leave the country on a family reunion cruise. This was really praying on my mind as I now have so much invested in my computer with my home based business in personal development and just recently, the scanning, downloading and preservation of all of our familie's historical photographs from as far back as 1896. This situation was consuming all of my time. Since I have chronic insomnia, working just on the computer fixes was taking up to 18 hours a day, nonstop. I was spending so much time, weird times, on the computer my wife thought I was having an online affair. No such luck for this guy!

Upon my return from the cruise I had hit my optimistic limit of tolerance, broke down and called DELL On Call for help. They were awesome to say the least. Yes! I did not hesitate in purchasing a one year three incident technical service contract. I spent a solid three (3) hours online and on the phone with an outstanding and professional DELL Certified Technician who was able to take over my computer remotely, diagnose, evaluate, and clean out the Trojan virus. He revealed to me this was a rather insidious Trojan virus in that it initiates itself well embedded into the programming and continuously mutates spreading through out the hard drive and programs. He actually showed me the virus activity and that it was a countdown virus, meaning, had I waited until midnight of that night, it was 4:00 PM when I called him, my hard drive would have been totally destroyed. BUMMER!

Now came the big job of cleaning up the residual mess caused to the applications and even the registry. No computer technical service can guarantee or attempt to repair all of this due to the sheer number of programs and applications involved, it was up to me. There was some serious removal and reinstallation of programs and applications. This difficult process was seriously compounded by the bugs and problems with the new Firefox upgrade to 3.5 and its refusal to "play well with others in the sandbox." I finally uninstalled Firefox 3.5 and performed a clean reinstall of Firefox 3.01.11, the previously well functioning version. In addition, my HP printer software was completely corrupted.

Dealing with these issues one at a time, pulling from full image backups, restores, uninstalling and reinstalling with all of the glitches imaginable with both Firefox and HP were unbelievable. Finally, as a direct result of all of my personal research on the net; technical forums, product forums, knowledge bases, and serious trial and error learning, I FINALLY got my PC back to a clean, glitch free, awesomely functional, basis on Thursday, July 16th at 1:30 PM.

The life's lesson here guys? Take every attack of a virus or Trojan very seriously. To prevent grief in your life, always always perform backups to an external hard drive or separate partition on your hard drive. Utilize all of the services provide by McAfee Security Suite or Norton, perform twice daily full Restore Points to always have something clean and solid to fall back to in this event. At one point I was actually in fatal fear of having to uninstall and reinstall a clean Windows XP Professional Operating System. This would actually remove all existing information, archives, programs, and applications. Not an option in my mind! Learn from my experience, PLEASE! Now I can't wait to get back to my real life, what little there is of it, but it is mine.

Thank you for reading this expose' and personal experience. I hope you enjoyed and benefited from your time invested. I greatly appreciate it.

[jamesdj1]

Craig I so feel your pain bro!

Won't go into the details on this end as anyone who has dealt with this knows how frustrating it is and how much productivity is lost.

I've been dealing with my Dads PC issues. Back in April when a new nasty virus was out I did some major clean up work on my PC's to be sure I was safe and his because his were not running good.

Anway... he's got more junk on his PC again than I have time to handle and besides I stink at it and HATE dealing with techie stuff. Basically I think it's time he calls a PC doc or just do a reinstall.

He does not use for business but does check into personal accounts and what not but I told him in no uncertain terms KEEP OUTTA YOUR BANKING INFO till you know 100% clean up has been done.

Frustrating is some programs pull out some things while others don't so it takes a lot of back and forth and wasted time.

[jambon]

ok, here's how to stop that in the future... an ensure you NEVER get a virus again..

1. get rid of mcaffe... it's a crap... right up there with norton mc bloatware.

2. Get a real anti-virus like kaspersky antivirus

3. get malwarebytes

4. Get and sue firefox (if you don't already)

5. get the "noscript" addon for firefox and only allow pages you know and trust.

I promise you'll never have a virus problem again

[homebasedmom]

30 days? Its a lot of sufferings. I remember my computer got infected by a virus, the sad part is I wasn't able to back up my files and I couldn't open up my computer.

But everything is well now, that was before. Lesson learned, have my files backed up just in case.

[geolt7]

I have been in IT support for more than 8 yrs. Let me just share the 3 basic tools I use the keep attacks at bay. They r in no way full proof but are free have served me well:
1. Avast anti-virus home edition
2. Zone Alarm firewall
3. Spybot SD - registry protection and spyware removal

[bobsalong]

Thanks for the reminder, Craig. Sorry you had such a rough time, but it sounds like Dell was a great help.

Geolt7--thanks for your recommendations also, I'll check them out.
Bob

[Lloyd Buchinski]

i had a really nasty down loader trojan a few years ago. As soon as it is in a system it disabled AVG and Windows defender, and started downloading nasties. Fortunately I often have my little 'local area connection status' window open and I noticed something was downloading when nothing I knew of should be.

I was on dial up at the time and that gave me more time to realize what was happening. When I got rid of it and looked up the name with G, there were stories of computers that were just trash after it got going on them.

There is practically no limit to the amount of damage they can do to a puter.

[BullDawgDany]

I recently got one myself. I kept on getting trojan and rootkit alerts from AVG Anti virus. Then my computer started showing another anti virus program... like it was running. It was just an ad though that kept on appear and was in my taskbar. I went to one of the spyware forum and was able to remove with some help from them. Long task though. Running all the programs, posting logs, etc. But happy they helped me.

The only thing I can think of is that I went to a few wrestling websites that seemed to be loaded with adware or spyware.... something. I did not start having my problems until after I visited those sites.

[Tyrus Antas]

What are you folks doing with your PC's to get virus like that? I haven't got a virus in like... a decade! Now obvsiously the fact that I don't try to download free porn and warez helps a bit j\k

Tyrus