I haven’t been involved in the hard-core technical aspects of computing for a while now (almost 6 years), but have had several prior years of experience in supporting technologies, building computers, writing software etc.
However, whenever I run into a technical problem, I get really annoyed and anxious until I’m able to fix it myself. I have the opportunity to engage my IT dept. to help, but somehow I can’t work on anything else until I’ve fixed it myself. It’s rather annoying at times because I have a lot of productive work to do and I can use another workstation to continue what I’m working on, but my mind doesn’t let me. I keep wanting to try different things until something works.
This is a rant of sorts - I’ve spent the last day and a half fixing my tablet pc in what I initially thought was something that I won’t be able to do (based on comments from the Internet from people who had faced somewhat similar problems).
If you really want to know what happened, it was a problem that snowballed into a bigger problem...
started with some very nasty malware which disabled all antivirus/spyware removal/firewall software on my computer, and hijacked my browser.
Upon fixing some of the problems manually and then running a new set of tools, the hard-drive got corrupted... I suspect it was some file handles that remained open/idle since I was running so many repair tools simultaneously.
As a result the system wouldn't even boot up and as is the case with most vendors these days, I wasn't supplied with a recovery/boot CD/DVD. However, after some research, I got a new recovery DVD made and used the recovery console to fix startup problems.
I'm finally in now, and running spyware removal tools and hijackthis again to see if everything is okay.
Thats nice to hear that it is back and running.. Though what you said in your first post is all the love for your hobby.. I wont call it work.. because Work is a thing that you have to put yourself into it..
Nice to hear that there are some people like me who cant sleep till they are through the problem or the function they are trying to do. :D
What you were having installed to secure yourself from such infections? were you using nay antispyware, antivirus? or just using it with a free antivirus to have a feeling of being secured.
^ aaho, I actually had multiple forms of real-time protection tools running at the time including Norton AV, AVG, Zone Alarm, and Adaware. It was my work laptop so I had to stick with the paid products installed/managed by IT support and I complemented these with a couple of freeware ones just in case.
However, when $hit happens, it finds a way to happen. I've been lucky though since this type of stuff only hits me about once every two or three years, so I might be doing something right... and I end up learning about new tools and guidelines every time.
The main lesson through today's exercise was not to use "chkdsk /r" on a Vista system directly... it's much better to use the recovery console instead.
nice to hear few tips right now as you just told about vista..
yah actually when it happens then it happens.
Though about Spyware I prefer malwarebytes antimalware. I use to use Adaware but then I left it as it was also not effective at many times. Just give it a try or search about it.
PS: I like it when people share the experiences about Tech, that they have been through.
^ I use malwarebytes on a regular basis, alongwith superAntiSpyware... both these come highly recommended by a lot of other people I know.
The only reason I didn't mention these in my posts above was because I use the basic versions of these which don't provide real-time protection, but they're still great for scanning and removing malware.
^^ I guess you could have asked your IT department to provide you with good "paid" security softwares. I guess buying them isnt a hug load on company's budget.
LC, in my years of fixing atleast 15-20 cases like these on a daily basis, i have come to the conclusion that the only way to fight this problem is to back up your data, format your hdd, fresh install your OS (or use recovery cd/dvd) and finally restore your data. Or if you're lucky enough that the malware didnt kill System Restore (if youre running XP or Vista), then you can use System Restore which is pretty damn effective.
Using anti-spyware and anti-malware software takes just as much or more time as the above method and is almost never fully effective.
I dont' get it. I surf as many bad sites as the next guy (if not more) and i test out stuff all teh time. Ofcourse, over time, things do start slowing down and I do have to rebuild the computer but that's more by choice than neccessity. Right now I just have AVG installed besides Windows Defender.
I do spend a few hours once I get a new computer to build it up exactly how i want it and ghost it so worse come to worst I'd be able to get back to that position (minus the data).
But I do agree with the "solving issues myself" kinda mindset. :)
EDIT: If I do have some software that I think has a big chance of being infected I always open it up in a snapshotted VM, so restoring would be a press of a button.
^^ my dilemma is always been this: i build a system, build it exactly the way i want it, if i ghost it, say a 2 gig worth of stuff (xp activated, updated, firefox installed with my addons, office installed, etc etc etc), then when time comes to give it all up and restore ORIGINAL working snapshot, what do i do?
like what/how my starting point should be? format the drive, then how do i run ghosting and where do i keep this snapshot.. split thread if that gives me a proper software/solution
For any of these imaging applications you need a system recovery CD which you can boot off of. Ghost lets you create one as well. There is a free utility called Marcium (Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download) that you can try.
so the malware ended up doing a number on me - never got a clean working environment despite the fixes, and finally had to give up trying to fix it further.
Just gave in the laptop to tech support to re-load the OS image with the basic productivity software... I'll hafta install the rest of the programs myself as I go along - sigh! more downtime!
install / download everything in one day (pain in the neck, but do it) and then take its image-shot.. i think if everything works ok, this weekend coming up i will be doing that..
(i have a 1tb drive sitting in system thats not utilized yet and 320 +160gb drives are almost full (not optimized).. so thats my chance to get things done rite..
Malwarebytes is a great tool and one more that I cannot recall right now. It is not well known but it works well along with hijackthis.
In addition to these tools you can use netstat command at dos prompt with different plugins to see what is causing connections to which IP and what processes, etc.. Where anti-spyware software like ad-aware or others fail, thats where netstat comes in and allows you to fix issues... of course it takes longer and very tedious work!
We had breakout few months ago where a malware program that infects windows WMI service took over 40+ end user PCs in one location and spread across site-to-site VPNs to other remote offices. After running Trend Micro Corporate AV, ad aware, etc. with no luck and no way to track down what was slowing down the PCs, DNS was totally screwed up on those machines, exchange was acting funny... it was "fix the issue" paradise. We ended up using netstat commnand to track down the sucker and took us about 5 days to clean up around 100+ workstations.
I don't understand how anybody could crash/corrupt their hard drives with a malware crap. In my 10+ years of IT experience and at least 16+ hours a day in front of a PC, I've never crashed or corrupted a hard drive of PC that I use. I've fixed PCs that had spyware/malware issues that others installed unknowingly = user error!!!
