laptop help needed - anyone ?

A friend of mine has a laptop that has been infected with a virus.

 

any computer geeks here have any advice (she asked the geek squad at best buy

and they want $300 to fix it). I told her don't waste your money...I will ask the

experts here.

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Permalink Reply by millenial removing Bernie tattoo on January 19, 2011 at 10:15am

There are lots of different virii.   What exactly is it doing?  Is the computer still functional?   Install a free AV Program like Avira.  It will hopefully at least indentify the virus if not remove it.  If you know the virus, then google it and you should be able to find help online.

 

I got hit with a really nasty Virtumonde variant a year ago that was a bitch to remove.

Permalink Reply by Duppie on January 19, 2011 at 10:29am

Can you revert back to a previous version of her laptop?

We had a virus a little while back that did not get noticed by Norton AV. After googling the instructions I felt uncomfortable executing them.

We reverted back to a previous version and the virus was nowhere to be found. I cannot remember the name of that functionality. It was on a windows PC. I assume that Apple has similar functionality

Permalink Reply by dan brown on January 19, 2011 at 10:30am

great ideas alex and duppie. windows lets you take a "checkpoint" (snapshot) and revert back to it.

I also forget what is called.

thanks dudes !

DB

Permalink Reply by Jason W on January 19, 2011 at 10:50am

I'm in IT. If it's  a worst case scenario and they have left the thing on while the virus eats it alive it can get tricky. First thing I would do is get rkill and malware bytes on a flash drive.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/anti-virus/rkill
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Malwarebytes-AntiMalware/11867...
Repeatedly push F8 while it starts and boot into safe mode. Run Rkill to stop any active viruses. Install malwarebytes, and do a quick scan. Then reboot into windows (not in safe mode this time) and run malware bytes again.

 

If it's not too bad you can probably just put malware bytes on it and run the quick scan. BTW, malware bytes is much better than anything mentioned in this thread so far.

Permalink Reply by Jason W on January 19, 2011 at 10:51am
unless it infects the system restore files which probably 75% of the viruses do these days.

dan brown said:

great ideas alex and duppie. windows lets you take a "checkpoint" (snapshot) and revert back to it.

I also forget what is called.

thanks dudes !

DB

Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on January 19, 2011 at 10:52am

F*CK GEEK SQUAD!

 

Sorry, involuntary reflex to that company being mentioned.

 

 

Dan,

 

What you're referring to is "System Restore."  It's available on Windows XP, Vista and 7.  Give that a shot.  It's under Start > (All) Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.

 

Report back on how that goes.


dan brown said:

great ideas alex and duppie. windows lets you take a "checkpoint" (snapshot) and revert back to it.

I also forget what is called.

thanks dudes !

DB

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on January 19, 2011 at 1:31pm

Download and run SUPERAntiSpyware free addition.  It's the best anit-spyware program out there. Run it in safe mode if you can.

 

I also like Avast Free antivirus for keeping it healthy (but it doesn't catch everything).

Permalink Reply by Little Phil on January 19, 2011 at 1:47pm
I will do it for a good tune up and a meal

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