smss.exe backdoor trojan help??

djepje · Aug 20, 2007

Hello all,
I am kinda new at this so please bear with me. I think my younger sister downloaded some kind of trojan on our computer. I noticed that something was odd when our firewall "Zone Alarm" got turned off for no reason and I got locked out off getting updates for my norton and Ad-aware and then Norton antivirus caught an infected file called "smss.exe" in C:\WINDOWS\system32\xespobc\ and labelled it as a "Backdoor.Trojan" but it could not delete it, so it was put in the back-up items. But now when I turn on the computer I get an error the first thing while its loading, saying that the file smss.exe could not be located or run (so i press ok) then another error saying the smss.exe could not be located, that if it is not found any reference of it should be deleted from the registry (so i press ok again). I get each of those errors twice everytime I turn on the computer and I must keep pressing ok or the computer won't load. I had to update norton and Ad-aware manually and I dont know anything about deleting things from the registry.
I googled the problem and there wasn't much out there to help, but one suggestion was to "RUN" MSCONFIG and un-tick smss.exe if it is in there, but when I did that more errors came at loading the computer so I undid the MSCONFIG suggestion. Others suggested to search smss.exe and delete it if it is not in the system32 file...but the file is in thatfile as was caught by norton...I followed your "Malware Removal Guide" but I dont know a thing about using Hijack This programme so I didnt finish it.
I dont know what else to do to get rid of this problem. My computer is a Windows XP. Please, any help would be greatly appreciated !!!

TimW · Aug 20, 2007

Welcome to Majorgeeks!

Please follow our standard cleaning procedures which are necessary for us to provide you support. Also there are steps included for installing, running, and posting HijackThis logs as attachments.

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.

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.

After doing ALL of the above you still have a problem make sure you have booted to normal mode and run the steps in the below link to properly use HijackThis and attach a log:

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.

When you return to make your next post, make sure you attach the following logs and that you have run these scans in the following order too:

CounterSpy

AVG Antispyware log - ONLY IF NEEDED you were not able to run CounterSpy

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!

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smss.exe backdoor trojan help??

djepje Private E-2

TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member