Reformat needed? Pop up virus warning?

Ok I am trying to help a friend who is Running Win Xp. She has a friend who is a computer tech look at her computer for the following reasons. 1. She gets a "pop up window, which is rectangle in the middle of her screen that tells her she has a trojan in her system volume files, and tells her to scan AVG." she can't remember the name of the virus. 2. he found a comet program in her add/remove programs and was told that this program comes from things like Kazaa.

I asked her if the "virus" was giving her any sort of problem as far as running the computer she said no. She has done a full scan at Trend Micro and found nothing. And has ran AVG like the warning says, but AVG finds nothing as well.

My question is how can she find out if this is a legitimate trojan and how to delete it, if there is one, and two, do these two things combined require a reformat, In my opinion her friends request seems a bit drastic for these two problems..

Please help, thanks in advance.
Lolli

 

Ask her if the message mentions backWeb or backWeb.exe.

Steve

 

Thanks for getting back at us so fast Steve. She said that was not it. I've googled for anything as far as a pop up window and such and trojans but haven't found many. If ya can think of anything else please let us know, also for this kind of measure do you think that reformatting is a bit extreme?

thanks Lolli

 

I think that would be a little extreme, unless she just wants to start with a fresh system. It doesn't really sound like she is having that many problems. But, some of the other members may have other thoughts or suggestions.

In the meantime have her look at the links below, lot of good info and programs for the detection and removal of Spyware.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=44525

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

Steve

 

1) Can she log the error message verbatim next time?
2) Is the error message produced at a specfic time? Or randomly?
3) Is there a firewall like Zone Alarm running?
Don't reformat.

 

Hello and thanks to your response, I asked her if it was a random thing and she said yes, she has recieved it on a few occasions, but not sure what prompted it. I dont belive she has anything installed as far as a fire wall, I had suggested Zone alarm and maybe Hijack This but I'm not sure if she will know how to configure it. I had talked to her and she told me she needed to save all her stuff cause it was going to be reformatted, I suggested against it and I am trying to find out as much as I can.

Thanks again, Lolli

 

Would somebody tell her how to do a screenshot, I've been wanting to ask how to do this myself....

Also, check out this link, and the other one Matacumbie put too.
Very easy, thorough, and useful for keeping your computer clean.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

It is extremely thorough, a lot of people just use Ad-aware and Spybot S&D along with their normal anti-virus. Just do the system restore and the hidden files+folders steps. If problem persists, do the whole shebang.

Unless someone with more computer knowledge tells you not to listen to me.

peace

 

Sounds like she has a computer friend about to reformat it. Like Samuel Adams reformatting in cases like this is always a good decision. Hopefully her computer is in the hands of a geek or guru type, not some poser. I hope, among other things, the computer friend puts a firewall on it finally. If the computer friend lets her directly connect the DSL/Cable modem (if that's what she has) to the computer without a firewall, he's not doing her any favors. Make sure she gets a router on that thing, to firewall the internet (she'd disable Zone Alarm). Maybe I sound pessimistic, but there's more posers than gurus! Not that you need to be a geek to reformat and reinstall Windows XP. I'm just saying a half-a** install doesn't even accomplish much, in my opinion, and installs done right kick a**.