unknown virus and avast is down

Viruses and worms
1

Went to bed last night and my comp was fine. I had been researching some information for a world of warcraft encounter and my usual trusted sites weren’t helping. So I branched out…bad move. I tried to be careful about where I go and tried to use sites I’ve heard of or that others recommended. But I must have gone to a bad place. I came down this morning to find:

  1. All my icons gone from my desktop
  2. Programs I don’t recognize in my start menu: (magnifier, sticky notes, snipping tools are how they are listed. They are in the start up menu 'recently used programs section.).
  3. Avast is disabled. When I try to enable it, I get the following message: The Following components could not be started. Mailshield, IM shield, P2P Shield, Filessystem Shield, WebShield, Behavior Shield, Network Shield. I also had a message saying my registration key is expired…but its not. Its a 3 year key and the comp is only 1 year old.
  4. I was able to access the scan component of avast and start one, But after 10 mins it was still 0% even though it appeared to be scrolling thru my files
  5. I use Mozilla/Firefox. It was gone from my desktop and start menu. I had to do a search thru the start menu to find it and start it. When I did it, it had been wiped clean. History gone, favorites gone, start page gone.

Its almost as if my computer reset itself. But those files are there. Since I discovered this I haven’t restarted it. I haven’t downloaded anything. I haven’t run anything (except for the attempt at avast and I did set up mcafee to run…hey it came free with the comp last year). No results from McAfee back yet. Basically hit, “run” and left for work.

Unfortunately I’m at work as I post this. But I’m hoping somebody can point me in the right direction. What information would you need to help analyze what I have? Where do I find the registration key to verify? I’m guessing it was only a 1 year subscription(I’d swear it was 3 years though, but its showing me otherwise) and I hit just bad timing.

2
I haven't run anything (except for the attempt at avast and I did set up mcafee to run...hey it came free with the comp last year). No results from McAfee back yet. Basically hit, "run" and left for work.
Never install two AV as it will create all kind of mysterious windows errors and false positive detections

So you have to start with removing one…and it is recomended to run a removal tool to clear all leftovers
Removal tools is found here http://uninstallers.blogspot.com/

Do you still have problems after doing this…?

3

thanks pondus. since avast is down and out I’m going to have to rely on mcafee to get the process started. I just don’t think the avast was doing anything. Once I get some info and get things cleaned I’ll use the uninstall to get rid of mcafee. have always preferred avast (which is why I’m here).

4

a fist step would be malwarebytes download,install, update, scan. Don’t forget to remove what it finds.

http://filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

a second would be to make a scan with hijack this and post the result here.

http://filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/

and thirdly would be to uninstallmcafee sens you should not run two antivirusprograms at the same time just as Pondus said in his post.

good luck and let us know on the progress.

5

The symptoms you describe could as easily be the presence of 2 AV’s installed, as much as an unknown virus.