Dancing icons !

Question

Looking for some assistance with a crazy problem I've never seen before. I have an XPSR400 running Win98 that crashed and was just reformated with Dell's help. I reinstalled Win98 then went on the Microsoft site to download a couple of upgrades (year 2000, bugs, etc.). After rebooting, my desktop icons now shift all around when the mouse pointer gets close to them. Auto arrange will keep them in a line but they still swap places as the mouse gets near ! Eventually you can land on the icons and click into the programs. Anyone ever seen this before ? Any help would be appreciated !

dullard · Answer

Sounds like the W32/.........@MM virus. There are several variations so there will be different letters where I placed the dots. These came out in late October. Thus you need a virus program with a November or newer update.

There is a less harmful type 'a' version that just moves the icons around. My coworker got the type 'b' version that also deleted a few files. For the most part though, it was harmless (Just needed to reinstall two programs after the virus was removed).

dullard · Answer

I thought I might add this: Some prank programs have been written to do this same thing and aren't viruses. If anyone has had access to your computer without your knowledge, he/she may have installed one of these... Most likely it is a virus though.

Denny Denham · Answer

mainer1961,

The most likely cause for the problem is the W32.magistr.64876@mm virus. Information on this virus can be found here.

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dre53 · Answer

I have installed some of those prank programs at work, the looks peoples faces was priceless!

Pentium 4 1.9 Gig / 478 pin 400Mhz FSB
Shuttle Motherboard
Via chipset P4x266 VT8233 DDRam Support
Windows XP (home edition)
DDRam 768 M
WD 80 gig HD ATA 100
Gainward GF3 Powerpack Golden Sample
LiteOn 24x10x40 CD-RW
Pinacle Firewire Card
Santa Cruz Sound Card (4127 beta drivers)
Linksys Lan Card
Dell 991 Monitor
Microtek 3700 Scanner
HP 1100 Printer
Logitech Pro 3000 web cam

Locked Topics – Desktops General

Dancing icons !

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