Disinfecting brother's computer

Discussion in 'Malware Help (A Specialist Will Reply)' started by Miss M, Jul 21, 2010.

  1. Miss M

    Miss M Private E-2

    Hi! My mother has gone to stay with my brother for a while. She went last year and found his computer quite infected, so with your help, we cleaned it up. :) After she came back down here in December, the neighborhood geek did some work on my brother's computer. He did some good things, but he also removed some of the security we had put on it, and did some other stuff. He uses a lot of pirated software to fix friends' computers, and we think he may be responsible for putting Limewire back on the computer after we had removed it (we have removed it again).

    So my mother returned, only to find the computer reinfected. We need your help again! :-o

    We have been through the Read & Run. RootRepeal would not run, instead giving this error:
    device to control error 0xc00000024

    She is also getting another error from time to time. The most recent time she got it, the computer had been on for over 24 hours. Another user account had been used and logged off, and then she logged on to my brother's account. SigmaTel came up, and then the error:
    thread creation error: not enough storage is available to process this command.

    I had her go to System Information. Here is the memory information at that time:
    Total physical memory: 1013.43 MB
    Available physical memory: 326.81 MB
    Total virtual memory: 2.41 GB
    Available virtual memory: 1.04 GB
    Page file size: 1.48 GB

    She is having some odd troubles here and there; for instance, she cannot get her yahoo account to send me an email with her logs (it hangs, then fails). So I am going to post this, and give her my account info, and get her to try to upload the logs directly to this thread. Here's hoping it works!

    We greatly appreciate any help you can give us... again! :)
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Jul 21, 2010
  2. TimW

    TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

    It looks like the scans took care of the malware. We just have some leftover junk to remove.

    Please disable all anti-virus and anti-spyware programs while we do the following (re-enable when you are finished):

    Run C:\MGtools\analyse.exe by double clicking on it (Note: if using Vista, don't double click, use right click and select Run As Administrator). This is really HijackThis (select Do a system scan only) and select the following lines but DO NOT CLICK FIX until you exit all browser sessions including the one you are reading in right now:
    After clicking Fix, exit HJT.

    Now copy just the bold text below to notepad (Do not include any space above the word REGEDIT). Save it as fixME.reg to your desktop. Be sure the "Save as" type is set to "all files" Once you have saved it double click it and allow it to merge with the registry.
    Make sure that you tell me if you receive a success message about adding the above
    to the registry. If you do not get a success message, it definitely did not work.


    Now use windows explorer to find and delete:
    c:\program files\LimeWire

    Now tell me what issues you are still having.
     
  3. Miss M

    Miss M Private E-2

    Hi, TimW, and thank you for such a quick response!

    We ran the analyse.exe, and when she clicked "fix checked", it came up with a warning that we were deleting things, etc., and she clicked "yes", and it then came up saying, "welcome to HijackThis." and describing what the program does, and offering to scan the computer. :confused Nothing about the fix.

    We did the registry fix, and it did give us a success message. We also deleted that leftover Limewire folder that was somehow still there. :)

    Before we started, when my mom logged into my brother's account, SigmaTel audio came up again, and she got that "thread creation error" again. The computer has been up for a few hours, and another user account had been used before she logged into my brother's.

    The error did not come up after being rebooted a few minutes ago and logged into my brother's account. I don't know if the fact that it was not logged into another account first made a difference or not... but it wasn't doing it all the time anyway. The computer seems to be running a bit better, but it hasn't been used much since the cleaning yet. :)
     
  4. TimW

    TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

    As I said, the scans took care of the malware, so we were just removing some left overs. If HJT didn't work correctly, though I bet it did, the registry patch would have handled it.


    If you are not having any other malware problems, it is time to do our final steps:

    1. We recommend you keep SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for scanning/removal of malware. Unless you purchase them, they provide no real time protection. They do not use any significant amount of resources ( except a little disk space ) until you run a scan.
    2. If we had you use ComboFix, uninstall ComboFix (This uninstall will only work as written if you installed ComboFix on your Desktop like we requested.)
      • Click START then RUN and enter the below into the run box and then click OK. Note the quotes are required
      • "%userprofile%\Desktop\combofix" /uninstall
        • Notes: The space between the combofix" and the /uninstall, it must be there.
        • This will uninstall ComboFix and also reset hidden files and folders settings back to Windows defaults.

    3. Go back to step 6 of the READ ME and renable your Disk Emulation software with Defogger if you had disabled it.
    4. Any other miscellaneous tools we may have had you install or download can be uninstalled and deleted.
    5. If we had you download any registry patches like fixme.reg or fixWLK.reg (or any others), you can delete these files now.
    6. If running Vista, it is time to make sure you have reenabled UAC by double clicking on the C:\MGtools\enableUAC.reg file and allowing it to be added to the registry.
    7. Go to add/remove programs and uninstall HijackThis.
    8. Goto the C:\MGtools folder and find the MGclean.bat file. Double click on this file to run this cleanup program that will remove files and folders related to MGtools and some other items from our cleaning procedures.
    9. If you are running Win 7, Vista, Windows XP or Windows ME, do the below:
      • Refer to the cleaning procedures pointed to by step 7 of the READ ME
        for your Window version and see the instructions to Disable System Restore which will flush your Restore Points.
      • Then reboot and Enable System Restore to create a new clean Restore Point.
    10. After doing the above, you should work thru the below link:
     
  5. Miss M

    Miss M Private E-2

    Thank you, TimW! We're still getting the thread creation error, so I'll head over to the software forum to see if anyone can help me with that. :)
     
  6. TimW

    TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member


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