We have a PC plus 4 laptops (3 Vista, 2 XP), all of which run avast! 4.8 - though I am the only one who seems to realise the importance of scanning/keeping up-to-date
One laptop recently had a dim screen. Assumed inverter/CCFL tube at first, but then my sister mentioned her USB “had a virus” so I thought hmmmm. Avast had been disabled also. Downloaded trial of Kaspersky and found Win32:Heur (don’t recall the 3-letter suffix), fixed and now the backlight is working.
On another laptop a USB port stopped working. Ran Avast which found Win32:Dropper-BSN. Dad said he’d had a notification that his USB stick was infected - :
- he’d also put this USB into the PC, so I scanned and - no surprise - found Win32:Dropper-BSN. Also found Win32:Palevo-R.
Common denominators here are the USB sticks, clearly. Both of which now scan as clean (interestingly the autorun.inf file has been deleted).
Can I just ask whether:
a) it is possible that the infection was cleaned/removed from the USBs, or whether it has mutated into an unrecognised format? (Unfortunately my family do not appear to possess the mental capability to answer the question: “did you click ‘move to chest’ or ‘delete’ or ANYTHING” so I can’t give specific details and am working hypothetically)
b) there is a way I can deduce the answer to the chicken-egg question: did the infection come from the USBs or did it infect the USBs from elsewhere? (e.g. Win32:Palevo-R was found in temporary internet files)
c) there are any additional scans I should run/files I should check for (have previously backed up registry) to ensure that all threats have now been neutralised?
I need to be able to give advice to AV-phobes.
I will understand most tech information given - I’ve not included virus logs etc due to the general nature of my questions.
Many thanks