spyware? wtf bbq. task manager disabled by administrator! help!
 

So this all started today....

I closed my laptop and went and got a shower....came back to it and opened it. The screen was blue (not the blue screen of death though) and said windows XP in the corner. Scrolling through the screen were a ton of commands i guess..."deleting such and such"...."recovering such and such"

When it ended it said rebooting. Computer restarted and all seemed normal. Then a window popped up from the task bar "you computer is infected with spyware, windows will download a yada yada yada to protect from data loss. Click here to protect your computer from spyware!". The emblem for this little thing is a red circle with an "X" in it. But when i click its dialog box, and error occurs. SO now i am thinking....maybe this thing is the spyware.

So i try to open taskmanager and an error occurs saying taskmanager has been disabled by the administrator....wtf! thats me!

helps?!

youre pretty much ****ed..... :(

get all your files off and reinstall windows. you can also try googling and might find a complicated way to remove this thing, but i'd never trust a machine after that deep level of compromise; when it screws with your taskmanager permissions you have no idea what it's done or will do, even if you think you've killed it.....

weak.

but true.... hit me on aim if you want more help/details/questions/etc

I've got a few programs that'll help you out.

so i am sure i didnt fix the problem, but rolling the computer back a month sure has made things SEEM better. my email is pmaicher (at) gmail.com if you have cool programs that can save my ass.

Download this.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

It's free and it does a very good job. Also superantispyware is free and works pretty well

pete...how weird, my roomate JUST got the same thing....i had one lap left of watching the F1 race at fuji speedway when the damn thing restarted and is now all F'd....


what fixed urs?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've had a thing popping up for months now saying my computer may be corupted by spyware and some **** about win32. it eventually made my desktop melt down. now im on a laptop and i'm starting to get the same ****. I don't even go on porn site or anything weird like that. just forums and stuff. i'm almost starting to thing its in my cable connection somehow.

haha nah they spread through trusted sites half the time.... its amazing how insecure the internets are (and after working in internet security, you start to look at everything differently..... :( )

so i did my usual thing. went through regedit and searched Google for the things in there that returned spy ware results, deleted all that ****. Then i downloaded ad-aware and spy bot......they worked overnight and cleaned up over 4000 files apparently. I then made a few more custom cleanup and modifications to the start up list and what not. Also downloaded Firefox and stopped using IE, I am told things are much safer with Firefox.


hmm, what i dont like is that with firefox, Alt-S doesn't submit the post. weak.

Mac

/thread!

This is the exact reason I went away from windows based laptops. Mine was just over a year old and infected with so much bull **** it was insane. During the middle of the night my laptop would say "Congratulations, you've been selected to win a free iPod Nano!"

Thats usually a computer virus, but having a Mac doesn't really mean that you can never get a virus on it.

http://antivirus.about.com/od/macint..._Resources.htm

Did your desktop happen to turn blue with text afterwards? Also, just because anti-virus and spyware programs SAY the computer is clean, doesn't always mean that it is. Personally, if a virus gets onto my computer (and they have), then usually, its just a reformat time for me. Make sure everything important is backed up, and reinstall everything.

In terms of being more secure, FF3 is a lot better then IE7, since most viruses are coded for IE and its exploits over FF. As for losing a keyboard shortcut... its better then losing bank account info to some random person who wants your money.

the first picture doesn't even look legit. they spelled prevent incorrectly and is missing a space after the period after data loss. next time get into safe mode and run your anti-spyware software from there. i use superantispyware.

yeah thats what triggered me off to thinking it was a fake. everything seems cool now, im sure i am still infected but it runs ok.

I use Trend Micro and It has kept my PC clean for almost a year...It runs its sweep everynight when im asleep and does a full scan like once a week. But Its also not free I paid for it.

sounds like you got pwn

being infected = no good.

At least its not the Herp a Lerp

macs have more vulnerabilities than windows these days, and apple sucks at patching in unbelievable ways.... i never have problems on a windows box; you just have to know how to secure it in the first place.

Bingo. Just because it isn't Windows doesn't mean its totally secure.