I worked on a friend’s computer last week when they complained of severe slowing. I ran Spybot Search and Destroy to clean out the spyware, installed Spyware Blaster to bolster their shields and installed Avast 5 for virus protection. There was a LOT of junk to deal with.
The problem is, when I rebooted the computer and Avast loaded, the web shield and mail shield were both disabled. I watched what appeared to be a flurry of outgoing packets on her modem and was then able to reset the web and mail shields. A full scan by Avast found nothing. A scan by Spybot S&D found nothing. I uninstalled Spybot S&D, installed AdAware and ran it. It found some junk files but no viruses or spyware. But on reboot, Avast mail and web shields were both again disabled.
What is going on? Is there something else I need to check?
I downloaded and ran both programs. Could not find the logs on the friend’s computer after I was finished but Malwarebytes found 11 instances of “SmartShopper” malware and 2 security violations that it corrected. A full hard drive scan by SuperAntiSpyware flagged 59 cookies as malware and 1 link. All have been taken care of.
At this point, after a recent virus attack on my own computer that I thought I had cleaned up, I decided to scan my own machine. Malwarebytes found 9 files and SuperAntiSpyware crumbled up 14 tracker cookies. After a reboot, all of the icons that had disappeared from my taskbar reappeared.
