Reboots and deletes Favorites

I have an old P4 machine that is working fine. All of a sudden it started misbehaving. It will suddenly reboot and after it reboots the Favorites are gone. NAV finds nothing. Neither does Spyware Doctor, nor do several other spyware programs. I've run two programs to check for rootkits. And I've run HijackThis. Nothing. Could it be a hardware problem? Or is this some really well hidden malware?

Thank you

 

Welcome to MajorGeeks.com, please follow our standard cleaning procedures:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/images/grenade.gif Run ALL the steps in this Sticky thread READ & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support

• Make sure you check version numbers and get all updates.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/images/grenade.gif Very Important: Make sure you tell us the results from running the tutorial...was anything found? Were you unable to complete any of the scans?...Were you unable to download any of the tools?...Did you do the on-line scans as suggested? etc.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/images/grenade.gifAfter doing ALL of the above and you still have a problem, make sure you have booted to normal mode and run the steps in the below thread to properly use HijackThis and attach the log:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/images/grenade.gif Downloading, Installing, and Running HijackThis

• Make sure you also rename HijackThis.exe as suggested in the procedures. Use analyse.exe for the new name. This is very important due to some new infections going around..

http://www.majorgeeks.com/images/grenade.gif In your next post, please make sure you attach the following logs and that you have run these scans in the following order:

• CounterSpy - ONLY IF you were not able to run Windows Defender
• Bitdefender - from step 6
• Panda Scan - from step 6
• runkeys.txt - the log from GetRunKey.bat
• newfiles.txt - the log from ShowNew.bat
• HijackThis

NOTE: You can only attach 3 files in a single message so it will require that you use two messages to attach all of these logs!

 

Pretty impressive malware deletion process.

I think I am going to back up the data files and reintall the OS (after formatting the HD). Other than transporting some malicious something with the data files, formatting the HD and reinstalling should take care of any malware, shouldn't it?

 

Yes, a format reinstall will remove the infections however we can remove them without this. It's up to you what you want to do.

Let me know!