Geeks. we have a problem.

I'm experiencing very long load time for IE pages + not unusual to get a not connected screen.

Added virus protection to Spy Sweeper and got three viruses on the first sweep. Quarantined them and that seemed to help for a while, but now the problem or some variation of it has returned.

Had an R3 in hijackthis and got rid of it, but it comes back when I restart.

Haven't been able to open my Hotmail page for a day now. I get the sign-in page but then it struggles and disconnects.

I sort of know what to expect, so I'm ready to get started.

Thanks,

 

I've started doing the stuff your protocol requires, but I have a problem doing. Namely, I can't reach this forum by way of the affected computer. I can log on to Majorgeeks, but when I try to get to the forum with the protocol and links and stuff, the link seems to "time out" after a while and I get "Internet Explorer cannot display web page".

This is typical of the problem that brought me here for help.

I can't see a way to make all the checks and follow all the links of the protocol on the affected PC if I can't reach the protocol.

Do you have any idea what might be causing me to go "waiting for (the URL)" and then time out rather than connecting? (IE tells me at first that the site is "found".)

My three viruses were these: JS/Istbar-B ... Troj/BagleDI-M ...
W32/Bagle-BK

They're presently quarantined and I didn't find any specific removal instructions in your link.

I had McAfee Antivirus VirusScan, AVG and Spysweeper with antivirus. Giving up Mcafee and AVG (because they didn't detect the three viruses noted above.

Thanks,

 

Looking good.

So far as I can tell, we're back to normal.

Lessons learned? Very complex troubleshooting so I'm not sure what the problem was, or what cured it.

I guess my pre-existing malware/antivirus program(s) were inadequate. It would be nice to always have the right stuff before I get clobbered with crap, but I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Finally, at the end, I have a question:

You say,

"Often times, you may have trouble removing a virus, trojan, spyware, etc. because system restore has saved it as a check point and it can not be accessed. To solve this, you will need to disable system restore, reboot, scan for the problem and finally re-enable system restore."

When I look at your system restore procedure, I don't see any "scan for the problem" sort of thing, and I'm not really sure what that means anyway. In other words, I kind of get the system restore logic except for scanning after rebooting.

Any advice?

Many thanks again. Great to be functional as before.

 

Ok, I have done the system restore stuff and scanning yet, but here are the logs.

More logs to come, I think.

******

On second thought, I think these logs are all you've called for.

 

Hi Tim,

How are things running? Pretty good...a big improvement over a couple of days ago. It was really snappy at first, but now my wait times are longer, not as bad as before, but somewhat annoying given what I was seeing last night.

I want to correct something in my last message that may or may not be pertinent. I said that I'd done the system restore, but that was a typo; I still haven't. I thought I'd read something that advised me not to do that until I was "clean". Please advise.

I'll do as you advised in your last post and post back what happens.

A question, by the way. Do Macs have these problems too? I've heard they don't have many problems because Apple keeps more control of its OS, no open source, etc. I'm having serious trust issues with my online PCs because they seem to require messing with so often. I think if I was less inclined to get help from people like geeks, I'd be sorely tempted to throw this stuff in the garbage can.

Thanks again,

 

My page load speeds are good again, but I have a problem that I had before. For some reason my history file gets wiped out or knocked back to a day or less web pages. My options to save web pages says 20 days so I don't know what's going on there.

Otherwise, great.

I'll wait for any last advice from you and do the system restore toggle thing and call it good.

Thanks a ton. (Thank God for Geeks.)

 

Tim, a problem showed up just now when I tried to take a virtual tour online. My new Java didn't like it, gave me "Please Install Java Virtual Machine" at a certain email address. When I naved over then, I found the download was the same as the file Java 6.3 that I'd just installed...and something wouldn't let me install the new one over the old one.

so I uninstalled the "old" Java 6.3 and installed it again as a MajorGeeks download.

But that soon led to the same result (couldn't start virtual tour) and the same error message.

Any ideas?

 

I was sailing along yesterday at a good clip when things started slowing down again. Long page load times again. MSN home page and Hotmail open in what looks to be MSN / Hotmail light (as before).

My PC slowed down more today. A few hours ago, I suddenly got the blue screen of death, soon followed by a blue screen explaination and a memory dump. The onscreen message advised me to look in it for a possible driver problem. As I looked, the blue screen message went away and the PC rebooted. It's running a better now, but not snappy good like yesterday.

I found a big dump file (99 meg) and a minidump file (64k). Haven't been able to open the minidump. Do you read minidumps in cases like this one? Or, any other ideas?

Regards,

 

Tim,

Just a word to wrap up. I found a lot of boo-boos by following your advice and my pc ran better for a while. Then, the old symptoms seemed to set in. I thought I might have a rootkit, ran Rootkit Revealer and found some mysterious stuff in the log.

Yesterday, my pc flatlined so far as Internet pages were concerned. I had a good wireless network signal, but no connection. Eventually, I called Cisco and troubleshot the problem to my network card, a driver conflict problem. After uninstalling and reinstalling the network card software, my PC is running great, better than ever. I take that to mean the bigger part of my problem was the driver conflict in the network card, the lesser part, resolved by MajorGeeks malware removal procedures. My guess.

One last question: how do I know if I have more than one activated firewall?
Windows knows if its firewall is turned off, but it doesn't seem to know if one or more other firewalls are turned on. AVG seems to have a firewall, but's called a "resident shield" (I think). How can I know when I have only one active firewall, and what should it be?