Thetownend.com

.....I've got a rogue file that''s found its way onto my machine despite...firewall, virus scans etc.

   It spreads a load of unwanted porn, and lives in My Pictiure file and other Document files, it can be deleted from a couple, but not all, then returns.

 It doesn't effect too much of the running of the machine, other than an inability to upload or post pictures.

 Anybody got any ideas how to get rid without going to the length of reformatting?

thats what we had. and we reformatted  :roll:

remember that time i lost all my files? well yeah that was it brother  :(

Well thanks for that Dex.......but surely there must be a simpler way?

have you made sure your antivirus has the latest updates and your pc is upto date using windows update?

problem with viruses is identify which of the little buggers you've got  :?

I've got AVG anti virus which seems to update regularly, and a full scan revealed some viuses, but they've now been removed.

  I run XP Pro.....can't recall doing anything to it recently.

Can you remember what the viruses were called.

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com - have a look at windows update to see if there are any expoits in IE that come up (normally a few!!)

OK I've got Mozilla Firefox as a browser,  any advice for this?

 Viruses were trojan horse.

Is that Grisoft AVG? I found I had an annoying virus which AVG simply wouldn't recognise, so I bought and installed Norton AV and it got it straight away.

http://www.moosoft.com/

Get The Cleaner off there, good little program for getting trojans.

Good to see that its called Quick Reg sounds like the thing for me.

  Is it free?

try this Reg

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

Well I've tried your thing Jim, but it didn't seem to find anything, and now I've managed to delete it from most of the files, but now its lurking in a recently made folder, which allows deletion but replicates straight away.

 However at least I've now got my Avatar back.

Try booting Windows in safe mode with networking disabled, then try running Ad-aware, trojan cleaner(s) and AVG.

Give this a whirl:

http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html

It's a simple enough little program that routes out all of the files (hidden as well) that start when your machine is booted up.

When you say it spreads porn are we talking documents or pop-up ads?

Do you have any clue what it is?  Does it create files?  If so, what are the names of a few - sometimes worth searching google for a file name or two to get a backdoor clue to what the little bastard might be.

Cheers fellas.....seems to be clear now, although I'm not convinced I know why.......so something may still be lurking.

 Produced maybe a hundred or more thumbnails of porn in my Shared documents etc............stopped upload of Avatars.

 I'll give these sugestions a whirl if the problem re-occurs.