I have TrendMicro PC-Cillin 12, and have been pretty pleased with it. It's done a good job finding and deleting viruses/adware.
3 days ago, it's auto-scans started getting several hits an hour, detecting things with names like "TROJ_DLOADER" and "TROJ_MINI". It would delete these viruses/trojans/adware/whatever, but within the hour it would find the same thing again. Also, a few of these could not be deleted, cleaned, or quarentined. I was also getting a lot of popups in IE and would also get promted to download "WinAntiVirus 2007". I knew this was a scam and "WinAntiVirus" was probably a virus itself.
My usual reaction to something like this was to just do a System Restore to a few days before the problem occured, but to my suprise there were no restore points available; every date was blank. If i tried to create a new restore point, it would be gone the next time I restarted the computer. I tried to start my computer in safe mode, but it wouldn't even do that. After selecting a profile, the screen would remain blank with the little "safe mode" words in the corners.
Now I started to get pretty worried. A friend of mine told me that I must have a Trojan or Adware virus on my computer that probably had gotten into the registry. He said it was probably trying to downloading other trojan/adware/malware programs, which would explain PC-Cillin finding the same virus 8 or 9 times a day. He suggested a program called "Comodo BOCleaner" or something, which would scan the registry for adware and malware during the startup. BOCleaner found 1 malicious file and deleted it, but now every time my computer starts up a system error pops up saying that a certain file could not be found or started. I am hoping that BOCleaner did not accidentally mistake an important file for some adware, and deleted something I needed by mistake.
Even after BOCleaner found and deleted the file, all the same popups kept comming up and PC-Cillin kept finding the same viruses, so basically it changed nothing.
My friend told me to download Ad-Aware SE from CNET, saying that he loved the program and and it was pretty much as good as some $200 antivirus programs.
I went to CNET and they had the newer version of Ad-Aware 2007. I downloaded it, installed it, checked for updates and restarted my computer. When my computer started up again, I went to PC-Cillin to shut it down, since it might interfere with Ad-Aware. I saw a notice that I had missed before, saying that my subscription to it had expired 2 days ago, so basically I was vulnerable to new viruses for 2 days and I didn't know it.
Anyway, I shut both TrendMicro and BOCleaner off, and started up Ad-Aware. Right off the bat I got a message telling me something along the lines of "Core System Busy". I don't know what this means. I then went to settings and changed them around so that they would scan as much as my system as they could. I went to do Full Scan, but got an error message saying something like, "Error 5002: Scanner is Busy." No matter what I do it always displays that. I've tried ending processes in the Task Manager, but nothing has work. It is not scanning, and it says it has never scanned the system before.
I went back to TrendMicro to try to renew my subscription, but I can't. The pop-ups I am getting occasionally take me a new page from the one I am looking at. I'll be half-way through filling out my renewal form when I get taken to a new page advertising some crap. When I hit the back-button, all the info I had put in is gone. To make things worse, I have to renew my subscription on that individual computer. I can't just use my un-infected laptop to do it.
I have disconnected the infected computer from the internet and am typing this on my laptop. You guys are my last hope.
The infected computer is my parent's computer (I'm off at college most of the year) and of course they havn't backed anything up. I have tried burning DVD's and CD's with vital information and pictures on them, but the burnings get interupted halfway though and fail. Could anybody help me out with this? The error messages I listed might not be the exact wording, but I can go look up what they say exactly if you need me too.
Even if Ad-Aware could fix it just enough to allow me to get important info and files off would be amazing.
Any info or help on this would be GREATLY appreciated. If you guys manage to fix my PC, i will so buy the updated version.
