Computer help needed.....

[Reg Smeeton]

.....my kid was messing with my computer  the other day, and left my firewall down :angry:

    He's a bit of a computer kid, but has now buggered off for 10 days on hols.

   The beast has now been infected with shite, which is a couple of repeating pop up icons on the bottom tool bar, which refuse to be moved, and keep informing me that machine is infected  with viruses porn and spyware.

  I've put the FW back up, run a virus check, which turned up some Trojan horses and an unidentified thing, which has been removed, run Spybot and Adaware amd got rid of some spyware.....but the annoying pop up are still there.

 Any ideas on how to get rid anyone?

[genf_stfc]

you've done all the things i would suggest - apart from wait 10 days ?!

[Batch]

Old people are often easily confused with new fangled technology

I'd try hitman pro which pulls in a number of these 'removal' programs for you (spybot and adware and more). It takes a while (updates/installs) and you may be required to click the odd yes to agree to licencing,

http://www.hitmanpro.nl/

It's in dutch but I think the program has an 'English' installation option, but I bet you can speak dutch anyway Reg

[Reg Smeeton]

Old people are often easily confused with new fangled technology

I'd try hitman pro which pulls in a number of these 'removal' programs for you (spybot and adware and more). It takes a while (updates/installs) and you may be required to click the odd yes to agree to licencing,

http://www.hitmanpro.nl/

It's in dutch but I think the program has an 'English' installation option, but I bet you can speak dutch anyway Reg

 Tried that, doesn't seem to want to run after installation.... :|

[magicroundabout]

what about a system restore.

put your system back to when it was working properly then run spybot etc etc

[Batch]

 Tried that, doesn't seem to want to run after installation.... :|

Oh, bummer. Which version did you download (2.4.3?). What OS are you running, just spotted it doesn't work for Win 98/ME.

Apart from that if magics advice does not work at the bottom of the link I gave there is a list of the individual programs it runs! Start at the top of he list and work through ?!

[pauld]

Bit hit and miss, but you could try checking what processes are running when you first login using Task Manager (right click on taskbar and select TaskManager then select processes tab), and googling any you don't recognise (e.g. spyware.exe) - 9 times out of 10, they'll be common spyware exes and someone will have posted removal instructions.

Also worth checking under the My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run entries in the registry (Start->Run->regedit) which controls which programs run on startup. Be very very careful about editing/deleting any of these entries if you don't know what you're doing - may be an idea to grab one of the freebie "startup manager/editor" tools to do it for you.

Before you install any tool that claims to sort out spyware, viruses etc (or indeed the startup editor tools referred to above) Google it and make sure it isn't itself spyware - sadly a lot of them remove competitors' spyware and install their own.

Erm, hope that helps.

[pauld]

This might help:

http://www.registry-cleaner.net/download.htm

[Reg Smeeton]

Bit hit and miss, but you could try checking what processes are running when you first login using Task Manager (right click on taskbar and select TaskManager then select processes tab), and googling any you don't recognise (e.g. spyware.exe) - 9 times out of 10, they'll be common spyware exes and someone will have posted removal instructions.

Also worth checking under the My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run entries in the registry (Start->Run->regedit) which controls which programs run on startup. Be very very careful about editing/deleting any of these entries if you don't know what you're doing - may be an idea to grab one of the freebie "startup manager/editor" tools to do it for you.

Before you install any tool that claims to sort out spyware, viruses etc (or indeed the startup editor tools referred to above) Google it and make sure it isn't itself spyware - sadly a lot of them remove competitors' spyware and install their own.

Erm, hope that helps.

 I've tried looking at what's running under task manager there are around 30 processes,  sadly I don't know what is important and what's not without someone advising....the machine basically works but is annoying.

 So if I copy these down google them, that should tell me what they are right?

[pauld]

That's the idea, yeah. Otherwise (or instead) try that registry cleaner link I posted - not tried it myself I'm afraid but it looks pretty straightforward and apparently has a feature to remove startup programs. Certainly less dangerous than hand-editing the registry, but make sure you know what things are before you remove them.

[Ginginho]

First time i've known Reg to not have a clue about something  
Atleast you're human after all.

[Reg Smeeton]

Magic.....is your solution a kind of last resort ?

 Will it cause other problems?

[Iffy's Onion Bhaji]

Magic.....is your solution a kind of last resort ?

 Will it cause other problems?

shouldn't do. it isn't a last resort really, it's an easy way of sorting the problem. not sure how you do a system restore though as i can't remember now

[magicroundabout]

no it's the first thing i do.

go to start,
programmes,
accessories,
system tools,
system restore

Choose a date you know when it was working properly and fire away

[pauld]

Yup, that's a much better idea - lot less farting about.