Horrendous Attack!

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Ardra, no mailwasher, yet. We do not yet take the computers along in the motorhome. It is on DSL from the local cable company and they have done a pretty good job, so far. This time, we think it came in on an E-Mail from one of her groups. Not sure from which direction.

I gotta say that it introduces itself in a most spectacular and disgusting manner. I won't be forgetting that! It was an attack with no purpose other than inflicting pain. There are some really bad folks in this world and the internet is what the wild wild west might have thought it was!

Ray D  :mad:
 
BruceinFL said:
OK, so you can't click on any area of that popup. Then how do you get the popup to go away?

As I implied in the earlier post (And several others have expanded on) Windows offers several ways to close an offending window

First I like keyboard shortcuts, I can use ALT-TAB to make sure that the offending/suspect popup is the active window and then ALT-F4 to close it.

Or I can use task manager

Or I can do a standard power off (hold power switch 1-2 seconds)

Or I can do a CRASH power off (hold power switch for 5-10 seconds)

Or.. if the pop-up has it's own entry on the task bar I can right click and choose CLOSE

Several options.  Personally, I like the Keyboard method.

And I use Firefox
 
As was mentioned earlier never never use Microsoft Explorer

Try switching to Firefox or , my favorite, Opera. They are much safer.

Another thing you can do is dump windows altogether. I'd bet that 99% of the people who have a computer could use Linux for everything they do. And the best part is that the software to do most anything is free [and not free because your brother in law cut you a copy of his disks]

If you would like to experiment with your system you can download a 'live' version of the software. This is just a CD you can boot up to try out linux to see if your hardware can handle it. It does this  without modififying your computer at all, if you take out the CD and reboot you are back in your old operating system. Note that running off of the CD will be slower than if you had installed it.

You can also 'dual boot' if you want. Keep MS windows for those few software programs that you have to have it to run on and use Linux for the day to day stuff.

Linux is much safer than any MS windows product. Most people don't even run virus checkers. And the ammount of free software is amazing.

If your main usage of the computer is web browsing, mail, photo manipulations, music etc give Linux a try.

There are many flavors (distros) of Linux. I like Ubuntu because of the user community that has grown behind it (much like this board)

You can get the Ubuntu version of Linux here
http://www.ubuntu.com/

This is a site that monitors all of the Linux distros
http://distrowatch.com/

There is a huge number of distros , lots with a dedicated purpose like education, media, size, ability to run on older hardware etc. There are even distros whos sole purpose is to help fix MS Windows problems.

ME
 
Ned, I went to that site and found reports of the fake virus threats  from last year... without the retractions of a week later! I reiterate: No Mac viruses.

A trojan on a porn site can load malware, but you have to do 4 separate stupid things to get it onto your Mac.
 
Yep, and you have to do stupid things on Windows to get infected with a trojan too.  No OS is immune, even Linux, although it's not a big enough target, yet.  OS X is now a target.
 
Jeff Cousins said:
Careful Russ, you will have Ron thinking that Apple is part of the Affinity Group. ;D ;D
I suspect he thinks they are made by Gulf Stream at a secret KOA campsite.  ;D  ;D
 
Huh.  All these comments about Norton...  I have Norton 360 and it is wonderful.  I also have Spy Sweeper that I run manually at night.  I have a clean sweep everytime, so Norton is doing its job on the spyware side too.  Never one problem.

BTW,  WalMart now sells Toshiba, Dell, and HP computers
 
For cleaning out cookies and spyware I absolutely love C Cleaner. http://www.ccleaner.com It's free and very fast. I use it at the end of every online session.

I also bought System Mechanic for daily deep scans of my system and haven't had any trouble of any kind.

I, too, went back to Norton Virus Scan and so far, so good.
 
I also use CCleaner and am pleased with it.  As for Norton I will never have Norton on any computer of mine.  Once was more than enough even though I had used it for years before.  AVG works just as well without the CCAP stuff Norton has.
 
Mike (ex-f-221) said:
That is the reason why I deleted Spyware Doctor from my computer. Even the start of the computer took a lot of time.

Absolutely!  The original install of Spy Sweeper had my dsl running like a dial-up line to Russia.  Freaked me out.  I turned off the Microsoft Vista spyware sweeper (Norton 360 has one that is working just fine) and changed the Spy Sweeper to run every night on schedule instead of real time.  My computer runs really really fast now.

I Always examine anything that runs "real Time" because of the impact on response time.
 
oldcurios said:
Absolutely!  The original install of Spy Sweeper had my dsl running like a dial-up line to Russia. 

Spy Sweeper isn't like Spyware Doctor which seems to do its own thing and in one case corrupted a friends computer requiring a complete reinstall of the OS and software.
 
Ray D
This maybe known,  but I'll still go ahead - -
There is a System Restore Wizard on XP that will let you roll back the operating system to a prior time.
If you can get the machine to boot up, you can get to it.  The only way I know how to get there is to use '"help"-  Start\Help and Support.    Search for "System Restore Wizard".  Then select "run the system restore wizard"

You can go back as far as you need to  ( around 7 days).  It won't destroy any data files (pics, etc)  Most of the time this will take of care of this type of virus also.
(key word -  most).    But it doesn't take long to do try.
Hope this helps
J.Mac 
 
If the F-8 thing works for you you can boot to a command prompt and type RESTORE IIRC

If the F-8 don't work then let it start to load windows. Kill it (pull plug, hold power switch, whatever it takes) and try again, should come up with a screen that says something about the prior boot failing and offer you the boot menu Same procedure

you might be able to do it from SAFE MODE as well

Done it a few times though, it seems, NOT on this machine
 
I appreciate all the comments here. Quite a few have been helpful.

I have now loaded my old desktop, Lazarus, for Dani to  use, at least until we decide to do something else. Lots of options, including just putting Dani's 4 year old laptop out of its misery. Dani wants to do the coup de gras, herself. She really took that attack, personally!

She's in the process of rebuilding her favorites and her E-Mail addresses. Done that myself, a few times, over the years.

And, by the way, since she has my desktop, now, I am at the mercy of Vista, on my new laptop. Guess it's sink or swim. We'd have gotten a new machine for her, by now, but I don't think the additional stress of learning Vista is a good idea for her, at this time. Later -  -

I have tried to "Restore" the laptop, several times, unsuccessfully. I may try again, but not for a while. Need a break! Jmac, I will try your method. Haven't tried that, yet.

Got a Private  Message. Sorry, I am not authorized to reply to it. Thanks, so much. I understand MailWasher much better now, and it is on the short list of things to do.

Ray D.  ;D
 
I wouldn't want any Apple users to be computing unsafely, so read this article from yesterday.  41 vulnerability fixes in one patch day.
 
In the future, Ray, might I suggest running one of the alternative browsers out there.  Firefox and Opera are much less prone to suffering attacks, and Netscape and Safari are good as well.  Ask any security professional what browser to use, and they'll generally give the nod to anything other than Internet Explorer.  Its just too buggy.

If you are unable to get Windows back onto your computer, I might also suggest one of several free versions of Linux that work quite well and arent much of a stretch from Windows - which would at least help get you back into business.
gOS is included in Walmarts new $200 desktop and has been getting rave revies for its simplicity
Xandros is preinstalled on the new Asus Eee $300 Laptop and is also well reviewed for its extreme similarities to windows XP.
These OSs can be downloaded legally for free from their websites and burned to a CD, but if you're looking for a new computer, the ones listed above well reviewed and cheap.
 

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