Yesterday afternoon I was downloading a file when low and behold my AVAST sirens started going off like there was no tomorrow. Apparently I was being attacked by trojans -numerous trojans. As AVAST alerted me to each new threat, I tried to delete the file or move it to the quarantine chest but on some it was unable to move/delete them. Yikes says I. Finally the sirens stopped…but were the trojans gone?
I was worried at that point if AVAST had been able to quarantine or delete all the necessary files, so I downloaded superantispyware and ran it -it found 16 items (not all trojans but at least 2 or 3 were) and then asked me to reboot…nervously I did. And I had problems…computer would reboot after a couple of minutes, network connections were gone etc and my Boot.ini file had been corrupted…and an error message system has recovered from a serious error.
What to do now? I decided to do a boot scan with AVAST, figured out how to do that and ran it. 3 more trojans (or perhaps the same ones were found). I deleted them and proceeded. I got my computer booted up and the network connections were still MIA, and the computer still randomly rebooted after a couple of minutes.
Once it restarted I took a look at the processes and found most were disabled. I went into services.msc and reenabled most of them (comparing options to the computer I"m working on now). I then rebooted…processes came back but I still had the boot.ini error. I tackled the boot.ini next, going through an 8 step process posted somewhere, and got that fixed…whew, one less thing to worry about.
So that brings me to where I am now. My computer is still showing the “system has recovered from a serious error” message and rebooting. I tried a few suggestions for that including disabling autorestart, and adjusting virtual memory. I let the computer restart yet once more and then jumped on the interent to go to windowsecurity.com to try their trojan detector…but I got the blue screen of death once I tried to activate the program.
The blue screen: details:
A problem has been detected and windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:
Run a system diagnostic utility supplied by your hardware manufacturer.
In particular, run a memory check, and check for faulty or mismatched memory. Try changing video adapters.
Disable or remove any newly installed hardware and drivers. Disable or remove any newly installed software. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup options, and then select Safe Mode.
Technical Information:
(and here I don’t quite know the layout from my scribbles)
stop (and then some numbers in paranthesis-sorry I didn’t get these)
aswsp.sys F21D7c4E
Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistanc
Further research tells me that aswsp.sys is an AVAST file. I read somewhere to delete AVAST as it might be corrupted and get a fresh install. But herein lies my fear:
I’m not sure that once I uninstall the AVAST software that I will be able to download the new avast or any other virus scanner for that matter. I fear I’ll still have the reboot issue so I have no thrown my hands in the air and am saying “Help me please!”
There are quite a few files on the computer that I’d like to get backed up but my computer is not recognizing my external hard drive (this is not a new issue it happened from time to time before). What would be a recommended method to get some large files backed up before I lose my data? The computer is on a network, do you think copying files would be safe?
Thanks I’m at your mercy now…
Carolyn
Hi Carolyn :