Ive got this girl that I have been seeing and I offered to fix her laptop because it is fugged to hell and back. I managed to clean every thing ACCEPT, this one virus. All it shows itself is a red button with a white x in it. Sorta like the x out button on windows xp but circular. It stays frozen in the task bar and constantly makes things like **** pop up and makes a ballon come from it with mispelled/type-oed phrases saying it has found viral problems and spyware ( obviously it is the problem) and also keeps refreshing disgusting **** icon shortcuts all over the desktop. Now, here is the actions taken.

Ran MS Spyware (thats right, it evaded MS SPYWARE!!!) numerous times even with the explorer program off. Ive also ran it in safe mode and the damn icon that wont budge is still running!

installed SP2 but didnt do anything however will prevent future problems.

ran adware... didnt do it either... did the same process and taks as above

ran Hijack this just like the others it found it where the program takes me too: "hotoffers.com" but when i delete it the f'n thing comes back

tried to find it and I cant...

does anybody know about this program? What can I do? HELP. this is the first time ive ever been really stumped and not been able to fix. This sucker is rooted in there good. I think its got 2 or 3 self install programs littered through this notebook. Please help me guys.

 

Damn, no body knows?

 

Patience.......you've waited a whole hour and 14 minutes.

Have you tried Spybot?

This is what I would do if I were in your position......and I do it about every 8 months to a year. Reformat your hard drive and clean everything off. Then reload the operating system and any programs that you need.

I run XP on my computer and it's quite easy to reformat with XP. Pop your OS CD into the CDROM drive and restart your computer, then go to "setup".

 

you may have to shut down and boot from the OS disc then reinstall it.

 

Uuumm, no good reinstalling the OS if the virus is still on the hard drive. You need to reformat the hard drive first, to clean it off.

 

Don't reformat the hard drive!!!!

Before you do, this sounds like an IE specific virus, find and go to your temporary internet files folder and in the address bar after the location type \CONTENT.IE(whatever version you are running, for example, .IE5 or .IE6, click enter, delete every file, folder, if there is a virus it won't let you delete the virus, delete everything you can, restart the pc and delete that file. Make sure to write the file path and name down or it'll take longer to find again. Delete this file, restart and run all antivirus, anti-spyware/adware programs you have.

Lemme know if that cleared up the problem.

 

this isn't always a good thing to do, either. a lot of viruses embed themselves into .dll and .exe files on your comp, so when you delete it, other things get hosed as well. i had a virus on my comp about a year ago, and we found where it was, but everytime we'd delete it, it came back. it kept changing its name by one letter or number every time, so there was absolutely no way to remove it. we finally ended up just deleting everything associated with the virus and then my computer stopped working.

i'm putting my money down that you should just reformat. it's not a bad thing to do, helps the comp run a lot quicker, too. just make sure you tease your girlfriend about the dangers of internet **** and viruses.

 

It doesn't still pop up **** when you disconnect the cable from the internet, does it? I would say that if you have access to Norton Antivirus, you should plug it in. If not, you could try hitting CTRL+ALT+Delete and going to the "Process" tab. Look for a program that is running that shouldn't be...If you have a second computer to compare this "Process" tab to. If you find a program that shouldn't be there, "Search" your computer for it. Deleting Temp. Internet Files doesn't matter. You could delete them, and it prolly wouldn't delete the virus, like xe said. If you still can't find it, I'd have to jump on the reformat bandwagon. And you'll have to lose everything. No point backing stuff up on an external harddrive or anything, cuz it could just piggyback and dump itself right back into your computer. Don't forget to tell her how lucky you are to have a girlfriend that is as okay with internet **** as you are!!!

BTW, that is any teenage boy's dream you're gonna reformat. I would have loved to wake up to **** every time the monitor came on when I was a kid!

 

ok... First off, you need to download the program "HHD Hex Editor." Then, locate the file that is causing problems, if you can. LIke they said above, it will most likely be a .dll file. Once you have found it, right click and go to "Open With." Choose Hex Editor as the program to open it with. When Hex Editor comes up, it wil have a box of code. What I do is highlight ALL the code in the file, and delete it. Once thats done, SAVE THE FILE. This will destroy the file and all its capabilities, then you can usually just click and delete it. If it comes back, then and ONLY THEN would i consider trying the reformat/reload OS.

 

An IE specific virus won't embedd itself in OS .dll files, it'll be in a file in the temporary internet folder which btw, does not contain any .dll files related to IE or the OS, reformatting will only leave you with a boatload of lost information, simply deleting the file from the folder will get rid of the virus without sacrificing the rest of the information on the HDD.
Please don't reformat, yes this is a way to delete the virus, but its NOT NECCESSARY!!!! I'm in school for Info Tech.

And even if it IS in a .dll file if you have the OS disk you can simply make a copy of the .dll file from the OS cd in a different folder, delete the infected file and replace it with the copy.