the muther of all malware

Home after a wk away, all firewalls were down, Avast 4 Free was locked, CCleaner was locked. Screen clogged w/many overlapping dialogue boxes from MS etc stating that my system had been compromised. List showed 32 separate viruses with clever names – two of them were “bank robbers” (BankFox.exe for one). I closed the VISA I use for all net transactions, closed two bank accts and opened new ones. Spent days (18 hr days!) down in the engine room, crashing through all MS warning to “not tamper with hidden files… lest there be dragons”). Fiinally removed all known and visible threats, but by then OS was so glitchy (guess MS was right) I just scrubbed the hard drive, forced a format and tried a system restore. Every attempt to reboot after full “Restore” was met with “No opsystem found.” Gremlins 1 - Moi 0.

Installed a shiny new Seagate Barracuda. Reinstalled all the software. Actually bought and pd for AVAST 5 Pro, reinstalled CCleaner freebie. That was a week ago. Got up this morning to find all the firewalls down. AVAST turned off and access locked. CCleaner runs but results are placebo. Found one file on task manager – VisthAux.exe – that refuses to explain itself or be deleted, but every attempt to search it out to its source has come to nothing. My coffee is cold. I’ve missed church (and chance to repent of the one about not taking His name lightly). Gremlins 2 - Moi 0. I have a 1982 IBM Selectric up in the attic. Seriously considering the retro-tech. Someone pls advise.

Advice for what problem…? What is your question…??
Use free Mbam to check your system for malware: http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
asyn

you’re talking about a full hard disk format and a system restore, what did you restore with ? what did you restore? where did you restore from, a backed up image? you’re not mentioning Windows at all…where does the current Windows install come from?

Thanks to you both. My wife reads my mind (not a good thing) so I think others do as well.

Doesn’t “restore” mean to “factory setup?” Press F10 at boot. I thought that was universal. Mine is an off shelf HPCompaq Athelon 64 w/a gig of Ram. XP Home (not the 64bit version) w/Office '07 yada yada. No bells, no whistles. I’m a writer. I don’t play games. I don’t “surf” the net. I don’t Face or Tube or Twit. I do have a nephew. Good news is he likes girls. Bad news… he like pictures of girls. I think that’s where most of this s… stuff is coming from.

My system has (supposedly) an onboard OS (WinXP) backup for both “restore to previous working date” and full reinstall or, “reformat the harddrive and reload the OS to factory defaults.” This malware shuts down all internal access from desktop. I’ve had to boot from the CD Rom drive, reformat and then reload XP from physical (10, count’em, ten!) CD floppies. Takes about 3 hrs from start finish – then I must remember, find and re-download the apps and programs.

I’ve read a couple of posts (since my own) and will try their recommendations – as well as your Mbam (Malwarebytes?) link. But this virus – if that’s what it is – has blocked some attempts to install from the internet: “Process not available…” dialogue box. I saw a post about halfway down this page that mentions a “forced download” that, I assume, is designed to defeat that attack and get the fix onto the desktop and into the system.

I think my main concern is the almost immediate infestation after my total overhaul (new HDD install) a wk or so ago. I mean, I was still in the process of reloading my old desktop with apps off the internet – like AVAST! 5, etc – when this thing jumped me again. Can a virus work its way onto/into a motherboard? Do I need to buy a whole new CPU?

Good news is he likes girls. Bad news... he like pictures of girls.
It could be worse........he could like picture of boy`s.......... ;D

@ the OP: okay, don’t panic :wink: you restored from recovery CDs, that’s what I wanted to know. No idea why your system has still all these issues after that. The thing is I don’t know how “tolerant” are your recovery CDs, because you changed the hard disk…and those recovery things hate hardware changes ;D (anti-piracy protection >>> they just want to make sure that you don’t install Windows on another system than the one that was sold with the OS pre-installed).
I don’t think you got any virus :slight_smile: I believe that your system needs drivers that are either not installed or not installed properly. Network card etc…

edit: if there had been a hardware lock you wouldn’t have been able to reinstall at all. And as long as it’s just a hard disk it’s okay. So it’s most likely just missing drivers.

Thanks again. To Pondus: I’ve seen the Nat’l Geo under his pillow. He’s in love w/a pigmy princess.

                  To Logos:  Good point about the proprietary hardware.  I will ck that out.   I did seek diagnostic support from both Win and HP.  It was not allowed access.  I guess the malware blocked the port.  Will try again.    The original HDD on this system was a Maxtor.  It just stopped working one day.  I replaced it with a plan vanilla Seagate.  The new one, as mentioned, is a Seagate Barracuda (I have no idea what the difference is, it just sounded cool).   All my friends in the buisness of writing books and movies are working on MACs.   I guess I might need to just lay down the shekels and make the move.   That'll just be our little secret.   I wouldn't to give those morons the satisfaction of the "We told you so's."   Again, appreciate the help.   No need to respond.