Please tell me if you know any answers to this problem.
Viruses, worms etc. may be programmed to attack and disable or damage an antivirus program. So if a computer may already have a virus or other malicious program on it, you have to take special measures to run an anti-virus program on it: ie. you need to run the antivirus program from a removable non-writable disk on an internal or external drive. I think that you may be able to run a new Norton Antivirus program from a CD-ROM to solve the problem except for one fact: a Norton Antivirus program on CD-ROM won’t have the latest virus definition updates. So you need to install the Norton Antivirus program onto a different computer, if one is available. The other computer should be guaranteed to have no malicious programs on it that might damage Norton Antivirus, which can be guaranteed only if the hard drive has recently been erased and reformatted and the operating system then reinstalled. Then you get the virus definition updates from the internet, and make DOS rescue disks. Both computers must have DOS for this to work, but Windows XP and Windows 2000 do not have DOS.
So the problem is to find a better way of doing it, preferably without spending much money. Does anyone know how to do this?
Mike
avast! Antivirus + avast! External Control (AEC)
First one encorporates Boot-Time scan (unique feature for WinNT based OS that enables scanning at boot-time) and second one (AEC,my program) enables control over avast! antivirus externally,in case if virus blocks antivirus startup.
The only thing that you should do is install avast! on infected machine (as i understanded NT OS based machine) and schedule Boot-time scan via my AEC program if the main avast! program fails to load due to infection. Restart machine and see what it finds. If the virus was infectable then you cannot do much unless it hasn’t infected any important files that you cannot replace without problems.
Thankyou, that was interesting, and thankyou for the PC security center web site address. I am still hoping for more advice in answer to my question for Windows operating systems other than Windows NT eg. Windows 98 or XP.
Incidentally, I am basing my understanding on these Symantec web pages:
Removing a virus from your computer when Norton AntiVirus is not yet installed
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/pfdocs/2000012015322806?Open
and
Removing a virus using a Rescue Disk set
Document ID:2001053109413806
Last Modified:02/11/2004
Thanks, Mike
Well,basically first rescue exit are on-line scanners. I recommend that you check your machine with Command On Demand,BitDefender or HouseCall (check my page for direct links).
If the viruses cannot be cleaned because they are resident,try terminating them manually (terminate any suspicious processes in Task Manager) and repeat the scan. You can try Rogue Process Xterminator or similar feature in AEC which can terminate over 120 known resident malwares. Not sure if any of them is on your PC,but it can’t hurt if you try. Then again repeat the scan with online AVs mentioned above when you terminate them.
Thanks a lot for the info. I have tried the symantec online scanner on both my computer and my mother’s computer and it did not succeed in scanning a single file on either computer. I don’t know if that means that malicious programs may be preventing the online scanner from working. But now that I have the list from your web site of other online scanners to try, I intend to try them. My mother’s Norton Antivirus has been disabled from mysterious causes and my Windows xp firewall is apparently knocked out from a mysterious cause, so there is circumstantial evidence of attacks on both computers.
If you know of any free utilities programs similar to Norton Utilities, that would be a great addition to your web site. Because sometimes it is difficult to find out if a problem is being caused by a malicious program or by just a Windows malfunction.
Mike
Well Symantec on-line thing is as bad as the standalone is.
Command On Demand appears to be the most effective of all on-line scanners. HouseCall and BitDefender are also very good. All these will probably detect more then Norton.
Also the couse of disabled antivirus is definitely a virus.