I’ve got a picture problem plus a merchant pop-up problem, not too many but the lack of. My OS is Me. All worked well until about a month ago when I installed some anti-spy/malware programs.
My emails come in with large blank areas that have a little red ‘x’ in th upper left corner, this is in the area where a picture is supposed to be. Right click on them and a drop down/pop-up menu comes on. On the menu is included ‘Show Picture’, left click on that and nothing. This senario also applies to web sites, not all. Some of he emails have listed, as size, enough kb’s to have the picture included, but when I forward them the size, kb’s, is only enouh for the text and that’s all the outgoing email contains, the text. I’ve called my ISP, Verizon, and revceive a ‘used car salesman’s’ response.
My next problem is similar but different. Many pop-ups, merchant, game and on-line program initiaters to name a few appear to be loading for about one second then the pop-up area turns gray and a little white rectangle appears in which are three geometric shapes, a square, triangle and round, red, blue and green, respectively. Right and left clicking on the group of shapes usually produces nothing. One time I got the same drop down menu as I get when right clicking on the red ‘x’, mentioned above. Didn’t do any good.
I called Discover Card, I use their ‘Deskshop’ propgram, and performed all of the adjustments they advised to make my system compatable with their program, again nothing. I thought one or some of my anti-spyware programs were at fault and proceeded to turn them off one at a time, restarting my OS after each, again no help.
What you suggested, I did. A trojan (Trojan.Clicker.VB.DN) was identified in two files of one program, one file was deleted by the scan program and the other I deleted along with the program. The program is ‘Start Up-Mechanic v2.2’. I doubt if it was a threat more likely a program tool, whatever, it is gone. Two pieces of spyware were found and deleted by the scan program. In the synopsis that followed the scan, the trojan was identified as: Trojan.Clicker.VB.DN1, any difference?
I reviewed the analysis of the Hijackthis scan and found nothing that I could identify as a problem, there is an extra Windows button along with a related missing file, that has been like that for quite awhile and two ‘o16’ items.
The first ‘o16’ item (dpf: {f5c90925-11d2-a20b-00aa003c157a}…etc.) talks to HP.com email support, that one is to be fixed. The second item (dpf: {3052830-99f7-4bb4…etc.) is a mystry to me, I’ll have to keep digging until I find what it is.
There is one thing I did not mention in my initial post and that is, I cannot access HP.COM or any of the support web sites. There are a few possible reasons for this, floating around in my paranoid mind and they are: 1-malware, 2-anti spyware–active or just inhabiting my system (programs downloaded not installed), 3-corrupt files or Registry—or— 4-HP doesn’t like me and black balled me with a cookie. Items 1 & 2 I hope to get answered here, item 3 is pending at an OS forum as for item 4, how do I identify and remove specific HP cookies?
I would say that Trojan.Clicker.VB.DN1 is essentially the same as Trojan.Clicker.VB.DN.
As for not being able to access HP support, remove anything that refers to support.hp.com (in particular {f5c90925-abbf-4475-etc}), it will be redownloaded when you revisit the HP support site. Then check you hosts file (Using notepad, open C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) and make sure that the only line is “127.0.0.1 localhost”. Remove anything that refers to hp.com.
Checked, found and did what you suggested–no change,
I used CCleaner to fix cookies and temp files, only. Now the problem has worsened. I think that should say something as to where the problem is, I can’ see it. Something somewhere is a little screwed up. If the problem area is not spy/mal ware then it is the system. The picture problem began after I started using Adaware, SpyBot,…etc. Apparantly key system files and/or registry files have been altered or deleted. How can they be fixed without stripping the HDD? Backups are not an option because I don’t know where most of them are.
I belive that (and I could be wrong) Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D make backups of everything that they remove. Run both programs and look for Quarantine or backup or something to that extent. Then restore what you think needs to be restored.