They do remove SPYWARE. Not necessarily VIRUSES, but spyware. I have Norton Antivirus that takes care of the viruses. But believe me, these programs got rid of all the spyware on my computer. I also run Adaware every once in awhile, and you know what it finds? TRACKING COOKIES. Cookies, as in the stuff that you have to accept in order to view some websites.
And by the way, I am very paranoid about my computer. So I run these programs CONSTANTLY, which basically assures protection. I have Spybot and Spyware Blaster running in the background and I run Bazooka daily to check for spyware and I run X-Cleaner daily to check and remove spyware. I also run Spybot daily for removal of anything suspicious (it finds stuff that isn't even spyware, LOL). Anyway, I believe if people are really fed up with spyware hijacking their machine, then these programs are very good, especially considering that they're FREE. I also know that you can't just run these programs once each and think your computer is safe forever. You have to do what I do: run them daily or even every other day for your computer to be safe.
Message Edited by redfirebird on 06-23-2004 01:31 PM
They are good are getting rid of more of the mundane malware (adware, spyware and trojans). BUT the bad stuff that we clean here is not that sort of junk. It is much worst.
If you look at any of our posts you will find us recommending ad-aware and Spybot S&D first (Try my own site for that
Here also CWShredder and they do a very good job.
BUT the other stuff is something else.
Just in case you don't think I know what I am talking about, try this site
Here and look up my status on that forum.
You see, I teach it, to about 180 people who are trying to learn how to join texruss and the others, here and at all the other forums, which don't have enough helpers to service them, because spybot S&D and Ad-aware (and all the other anti-malware programs) are unable to clean all the junk, as quick as the malware writers make new ones.
A year ago your statement would have been right, now I am afraid, for the badly infected people it is not right. You were just lucky not to get some of the bad ones.
By the way, I had all this malware/spyware on my computer WHILE running Ad-Aware. I have had Ad-Aware on my computer for about a year or longer, and it deletes stuff, but only temporarily. X-Cleaner got rid of all the stuff that Ad-Aware could NEVER finish off.
I was lucky to not get some of the bad ones huh? I had downloaded TONS of stuff on Kazaa Lite without knowing that almost all of it had malware and trojans. I had all kinds of problems with my computer, so I got tired of it and went on download.com to find some stuff that was highly rated by users. I found all of these programs, and also Avast Antivirus. When I ran a boot scan of Avast, it found about 15 different trojans and deleted them. This wasn't even the spyware. When I ran Bazooka, it found about 20 types of spyware. I ran X-Cleaner, and it found the same stuff Bazooka found, but of course X-Cleaner deleted them. Then I ran Spybot and it found minor stuff and deleted/fixed them. I run all these programs routinely and my computer is safe. I totally agree with you how sad it is that spyware/adware is just taking over the internet nowadays. It's ridiculous.
Brave quote 2 "We have evidence of WMD" - George W
Brave quote 3 "We firmly believe...see quote 2 above" - Tony B
Three of the above "quotees" are on dodgy ground - ChrisRLG, I'm with you. There are three certain ways to avoid the spyware/malaware/virus problem. 1, don't load any software (from anywhere), 2, NEVER (and I shout) connect to the internet and 3, don't ever use a computer. Please note that all of the previous might be in the reverse order!
Even the gurus are one (short) step behind the ******** (insert your own expletives) who develop these things. redfirebird you will find out sooner or later that there is no such thing as a "safe" computer!
mac, I've already found out the hard way that the internet is not safe. I've had to use my recovery CDs on this VAIO about 10 times in the last 2 years. I have Dell that is going to arrive in a few days. The only reason I upgraded, however, was because I wanted a faster processor. Anyway, my computer has crashed so many times, I can say that I've seen it all when it comes to viruses crashing one's computer...lol...anyway, I just hope these programs help people the same way they helped me.
Also, do you have a popup blocker or not? B/c that would explain the popups. And have you changed your IE home page since running X-Cleaner? Also, run Spyware Blaster and go to "Tools" on it and check the option for protection against tampering of home page.
Hi all, I followed these and other similiar instructions on ridding my recently infected Win XP setup and they have not released my IE from about:blank. After running Spybot, Ad-aware, HijackThis and xcleaner_free there has been no success. It seems like the file or process that is causing this problem is not actually killed and that process re-hijacks the system amediately. The problem I have seems to be related to other recent hijack log posts listing a sp.html per the below chunk ...
when I run Spybot Search and Destroy it continue to come up with a DSO Exploit (5 of them) even after fixing them through the Spybot interface. I am starting to lean back toward just completly re-doing the system which I had hoped I could avoid. If anyone has any help it will be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Thanks for the advice Tex, but the reasons I have had to run recovery CDs is that I have got the blue screen of death OR even worse: no boot AT ALL (OS actually got wiped out a couple times believe it or not). Yeah, I don't run Kazaa Lite anymore, although I do use Blubster clean version, and Ares. I only d/l music now and not very often so that eliminates a lot of the threat really. I mean, most of the viruses and spyware I have received the past couple years came from me being stupid and trying to d/l programs like Nero, Norton, etc on Kazaa Lite. It's not worth it b/c almost every program on Kazaa Lite is infected with something nowadays. Ah, the good old days when you could download programs and they were clean of viruses, adware, and spyware. It will never be like that again I suppose.
Please post your starter topic in the Main Index as a NEW TOPIC. We want to help and we can help best by seeing your message in its own thread.
Post your latest Hijackthis log in a new Topic.
Click on the link below for the Main Index and post your message with a new topic.
Texruss
http://www.russelltexas.com Spyware Fighter Wilders Forum
Slyware Warrior Tom Coyote Forum
Expert Malware Responder Dell Forum
Please be aware only the following DellForum members were trained at
TomCoyote.com and SpywareInfo.com to help with malware like viruses, worms, adware, scumware, foistware and crudware in general. They are also the only experts specifically trained to analyze and advise on Hijackthis logs:
Texruss, Baskar1234, Grinler, ChrisRLG, SpotCheckBilly, and pskelley. (If you are one of our classmates and not on this list email me for an addition to this
list...we need all the help we can get *;-)
Ummm...try updating X-Cleaner....I updated mine today. And I was running the same version that I provided on the download.com link. So maybe it's something new. Have you run Bazooka to see if Bazooka can find it? Bazooka has some instructions on how to manually remove spyware using the regedit. I did it a couple times and it helped. But you have to be careful of what you delete. Follow their instructions very carefully.
>I've had to use my recovery CDs on this VAIO about 10 times in the last 2 years. I have Dell that is going to arrive in a few days.
I have used a recovery CD about 10 times myself in the past 10 years ...on about 5,000 machines. Avoiding a reformat is always my goal and in this forum we achieve about a 95% rate of maintaining the current Windows installation (it's slipping a bit with the current new strains of CWS). A refresher reinstall can also fix many minor Windows corruption problems caused by spyware without resorting to the blowout of all data via the Restore CD route.
BTW....I use many Peer to peers (still have two) and used Kazaa Lite for several years until I found out it was "cracked" and not what I believe in for Net etiquette. If you play with P2P you better keep a stiff defense and be smart in how you allow the program to load. Unfortunately 99% of the users haven't a clue about how to do either.
All the best,
Texruss www.russelltexas.com Spyware Fighter Wilders Forum Slyware Warrior Tom Coyote Forum Expert Malware Responder Dell Forum
Please be aware only the following DellForum members were trained at TomCoyote.com and SpywareInfo.com to help with malware like viruses, worms, adware, scumware, foistware and crudware in general. They are also the only experts specifically trained to analyze and advise on Hijackthis logs: Texruss, Baskar1234, Grinler, ChrisRLG, SpotCheckBilly, and pskelley. (If you are one of our classmates and not on this list email me for an addition to this list...we need all the help we can get *;-)
ChrisRLG
3.9K Posts
0
June 23rd, 2004 11:00
They will NOT remove all infections, so don't be lulled into a false sense of being safe.
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2004 17:00
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2004 17:00
Message Edited by redfirebird on 06-23-2004 01:31 PM
ChrisRLG
3.9K Posts
0
June 23rd, 2004 19:00
They are good are getting rid of more of the mundane malware (adware, spyware and trojans). BUT the bad stuff that we clean here is not that sort of junk. It is much worst.
If you look at any of our posts you will find us recommending ad-aware and Spybot S&D first (Try my own site for that Here also CWShredder and they do a very good job.
BUT the other stuff is something else.
Just in case you don't think I know what I am talking about, try this site Here and look up my status on that forum.
You see, I teach it, to about 180 people who are trying to learn how to join texruss and the others, here and at all the other forums, which don't have enough helpers to service them, because spybot S&D and Ad-aware (and all the other anti-malware programs) are unable to clean all the junk, as quick as the malware writers make new ones.
A year ago your statement would have been right, now I am afraid, for the badly infected people it is not right. You were just lucky not to get some of the bad ones.
Message Edited by ChrisRLG on 06-23-2004 09:09 PM
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2004 19:00
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2004 19:00
macneia
7 Posts
0
June 23rd, 2004 22:00
redfirebird
Brave quote "I guarantee it"...
Brave quote 2 "We have evidence of WMD" - George W
Brave quote 3 "We firmly believe...see quote 2 above" - Tony B
Three of the above "quotees" are on dodgy ground - ChrisRLG, I'm with you. There are three certain ways to avoid the spyware/malaware/virus problem. 1, don't load any software (from anywhere), 2, NEVER (and I shout) connect to the internet and 3, don't ever use a computer. Please note that all of the previous might be in the reverse order!
Even the gurus are one (short) step behind the ******** (insert your own expletives) who develop these things. redfirebird you will find out sooner or later that there is no such thing as a "safe" computer!
Al
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 00:00
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 01:00
Also, do you have a popup blocker or not? B/c that would explain the popups. And have you changed your IE home page since running X-Cleaner? Also, run Spyware Blaster and go to "Tools" on it and check the option for protection against tampering of home page.
mikeWilks
6 Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 01:00
Hi all, I followed these and other similiar instructions on ridding my recently infected Win XP setup and they have not released my IE from about:blank. After running Spybot, Ad-aware, HijackThis and xcleaner_free there has been no success. It seems like the file or process that is causing this problem is not actually killed and that process re-hijacks the system amediately. The problem I have seems to be related to other recent hijack log posts listing a sp.html per the below chunk ...
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Bar = file://C:\DOCUME~1\Travis\LOCALS~1\Temp\sp.html
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = file://C:\DOCUME~1\Travis\LOCALS~1\Temp\sp.html
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = about:blank
when I run Spybot Search and Destroy it continue to come up with a DSO Exploit (5 of them) even after fixing them through the Spybot interface. I am starting to lean back toward just completly re-doing the system which I had hoped I could avoid. If anyone has any help it will be greatly appreciated, thanks.
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 01:00
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 01:00
Texruss
3.4K Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 01:00
Please post your starter topic in the Main Index as a NEW TOPIC. We want to help and we can help best by seeing your message in its own thread. Post your latest Hijackthis log in a new Topic.
Click on the link below for the Main Index and post your message with a new topic.
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/post?board.id=si_virus
All the best,
Texruss
http://www.russelltexas.com
Spyware Fighter Wilders Forum
Slyware Warrior Tom Coyote Forum
Expert Malware Responder Dell Forum
Please be aware only the following DellForum members were trained at
TomCoyote.com and SpywareInfo.com to help with malware like viruses, worms, adware, scumware, foistware and crudware in general. They are also the only experts specifically trained to analyze and advise on Hijackthis logs: Texruss, Baskar1234, Grinler, ChrisRLG, SpotCheckBilly, and pskelley. (If you are one of our classmates and not on this list email me for an addition to this
list...we need all the help we can get *;-)
redfirebird
66 Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 01:00
Texruss
3.4K Posts
0
June 24th, 2004 01:00
>I've had to use my recovery CDs on this VAIO about 10 times in the last 2 years. I have Dell that is going to arrive in a few days.
I have used a recovery CD about 10 times myself in the past 10 years ...on about 5,000 machines. Avoiding a reformat is always my goal and in this forum we achieve about a 95% rate of maintaining the current Windows installation (it's slipping a bit with the current new strains of CWS). A refresher reinstall can also fix many minor Windows corruption problems caused by spyware without resorting to the blowout of all data via the Restore CD route.
BTW....I use many Peer to peers (still have two) and used Kazaa Lite for several years until I found out it was "cracked" and not what I believe in for Net etiquette. If you play with P2P you better keep a stiff defense and be smart in how you allow the program to load. Unfortunately 99% of the users haven't a clue about how to do either.
All the best,
Texruss
www.russelltexas.com
Spyware Fighter Wilders Forum
Slyware Warrior Tom Coyote Forum
Expert Malware Responder Dell Forum
Please be aware only the following DellForum members were trained at
TomCoyote.com and SpywareInfo.com to help with malware like viruses, worms, adware, scumware, foistware and crudware in general. They are also the only experts specifically trained to analyze and advise on Hijackthis logs: Texruss, Baskar1234, Grinler, ChrisRLG, SpotCheckBilly, and pskelley. (If you are one of our classmates and not on this list email me for an addition to this list...we need all the help we can get *;-)