My Malware battle story

First I want to thank MajorGeeks, BleepingComputer and the entire anti-malware community online. You guys have saved me a few times and I can't thank you enough!!

I felt that I should post my story after a particularly harrowing malware experience this past Christmas day (thanks Santa...). I emerged victorious after hours of lurking through anti-malware forums like this one, and I hope perhaps someone could learn something from my eventual victory.

Don't do exactly what I did, though, go follow this guide from MajorGeeks:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

So, on Christmas day my fiancee calls me over to a dozen open windows of "XP Security 2012" as well as several nonfunctional browsers and applications. Her computer is a Pentium D, 1 GB RAM, running XP SP3 and using Symantec security software.

Google took me straight to:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-xp-security-2012

Following the instructions, I brought over RKill, TDSSKiller and MalWareBytes Anti-Malware on a flash drive and ran them in that order. RKill found some processes to crush, TDSSKiller found cdrom.sys was infected, and MalwareBytes repaired a bunch of files.

After these fixes the computer was booting up fine and behaving normally... except that the internet and CD/DVD were not working. The internet claimed "media disconnected" in ipconfig and the CD/DVD drive no longer came up in explorer.

So then I was really stumped for a while.

I finally made it to MajorGeeks.com and felt bold enough to try running the ComboFix - which alerted me that I indeed had rootkit.zeroaccess! Then ComboFix ran and rebooted a few times, telling me that it wouldn't engage all of the repairs until Windows Recovery Center was installed. I brought over the install file for Windows Recovery Center and let ComboFix install it, but even after running ComboFix again, the internet and CD/DVD were still completely nonfunctional.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

I uninstalled the network adapter (Intel Pro 100 VE), rebooted, and then brought over the files to reinstall it. No luck, still "media disconnected". I spent a while trying to figure out if I could make an XP USB key to repair the drivers or reinstall windows, but every type of XP USB boot gave fatal errors or blue screens. I wasn't feeling confident enough to individually repair drivers in Windows Recovery Center, so I felt pretty stuck and lost.

Then I uninstalled the CD/DVD drivers, rebooted, and the CD/DVD was back to normal. I disabled/enabled/repaired the network adapter and then, presto!, we have a computer again.

This is just a case history of an eventual success, not a recommendation or a guide. Good luck and don't give up fighting malware!

Gregthechemist