Stupid virus gone and stopped my stupid computer from stupid working
 

Gentlemen, I come to you with a problem. Early last night I came back to my computer after a hand or two of cards with my brother and noted that the machine was prompting me to log in. I thought maybe the screensaver had been on too long, and I logged in, but it took too long to load. My computer had restarted, and I realized that it had caught a virus (Worm.Win32.NetSky). Perturbed at Spybot's failure to catch this (and perhaps my browsing habits), I did a scan and it came up with 7 entries, 6 of which it dealt with. Another scan proved useless, and I retired.

This morning, I browse for help in dealing with the virus, and I find a piece of recommended antivirus software (AVG). I download it and run a scan. 13 problems, all fixed. The computer's fine, I turn it off and have some lunch.

I return not long after and turn it on. I log in, and I get signed right back out. I try again, same thing. I boot in safe mode, same thing.

I couldn't access the System Restore tool last night and I didn't think to do it this morning after I ran the scan. Now I can't even log into my account to try other things. Any suggestions?

Can you boot to a command prompt?
Alternatively do you have a second computer you can hook the harddrive too?

I could probably boot to command prompt, but I don't know how. :p

I also probably could hook the hard drive up to another computer, but it's a family machine and I'd rather not risk damaging that too.

I've been doing some research and someone suggested booting from the XP installation disk and running the repair console, while another suggested starting safe mode and restoring to an earlier point. I'd like to see if i can find anything else first, though.

Hopefully helpful
 

On the firewall front, do NOT, whatever you do, get ZoneAlarm. That thing gave me nothing but trouble and killed some of my programs.

Additionally, try and get a rootkit scanner, like RootRepeal, to see if you have any invisible programs doing things you don't want it to. Malicious rootkits are the worst.

So I followed them, and for the most part things seem to be working. I can log in again, and I switched System Restore and the Task Manager back on (lost all my restore points, damnit). I am currently downloading Comodo and will set it up as soon as I can. I think I may still have problems though, I've checked the performance tab in the task manager and my machine is running hotter than it ever has before ever. It calms down sometimes but for the most part it's doing a lot more whirring than usual.

Any final suggestions short of reformatting? I'm this close to wiping the bastard clean and starting over.

Software is incapable of making your computer run hot. Unless it's using a lot of resources that produce heat, it's physically impossible. Check to see if anything is hogging unnecessary resources.

I'm not sure how I would go about doing that, or what I would do once I found them. I imagine I would have to look under the processes, but if that's the case I can't tell the good things from the bad.

If it helps any, all I'm running right now is IE to read a website or two. The most I've ever run that I can think of is Photoshop, a folder or two, Windows Media Player (for music), and a browser for the occasional online jaunt. Even then I wouldn't get much trouble, but since I got things running again it starts protesting if I just try to open something as simple as my music folder.

I will fan your fans with fans.
 

Technically speaking, drivers are software. Drivers aid the operating system in managing and running hardware, such as with fan control and temperature detection. ;)


So what are your temperatures like, Top Hat? Or is it just everything seems to be running at 100%? In either case, do you have any processes listed in your task manager that are hogging over 50% of your CPU consistently or all of your RAM or things like that? It sure seems like you don't with that last post, though, so hmmm. What kind of machine do you have? Maybe we can look into heat issues, if it's running hot, on that model.