Windows XP Antivirus Pro 2010 totally put the lockdown on my computer
 

My computer's been iffy for a while. It's never been locked as tight as most, and I've downloaded some stuff I probably shouldn't have. But recently, I caught something that calls itself Windows XP Antivirus Pro 2010, and it's totally put the lockdown on my computer. The Task Manager was already offline, the command prompt went, then it disabled internet browsers and now it's shut down the router program. I'm gonna check this thread from school tomorrow because my computer's completely fucked. I guess I paid for my sins when it comes to downloading, but now. Is there anything I can do to get it functional again?

A ten pound magnet and a new copy of Windows should see you through this problem.

Please give a little more actual description of the problem in your thread title than "the corruption spreads."

What exactly can you access?

I don't understand the problem well enough for that, Meister. All I know is that, thanks to something I picked up in an internet red light district, this false antivirus program jumps up every couple seconds. Internet is offline, task manager and command prompt don't work, and my copy of Avast doesn't run.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php The program fro here will fix the proble- can you download it on a different computer- transfer it over and run it? You may need to change the executable filenae to run it- some viruses disable it- but change it to anything like abcd.bat and should be fine.

You'll need to run it in Safe Mode. If I remember correctly the version you got is actually interrupting system calls which is why nothing is working. So you'll need to run the computer in Safe Mode to install MalwareBytes then Scan it and it'll usually clean it right up.

I actually just got this on my emergency laptop running Vista.

It basically stops you from trying to do anything you can try to do when running an AV or something. It didn't have an AV to begin with so I'll probably have to nuke the hard drive.

Try to search the net for a program and it reroutes to this virus's homepage or launches the virus "scanner." You can kill the process in task manager but then it just comes back. Safe mode, with networking, or command prompt, the program is still there.

Unfortunately I wasn't even THERE so I don't know the circumstances of getting the virus, or any clue as to where it would be on my PC. Firewall/Defender/All of that are all compromised too, they all just launch the virus program.

Ugh, gotta go find a thumbstick now.

If you have "hijack this" or one of the task manager things that show where a given program is running from, you can kill the process and then delete the file, which should keep it from coming back for you to install a proper virus scan to remove it.

These new faux Virus scan viruses are using a weakness in the new "safety" features of Windows, which force an Antivirus to be running, if the Antivirus shuts down, Windows will notice it's shut down and attempt to automatically restart it, and bitch at you while it does so.

Remember kids, only download from places you trust!

Dude I literally copy/pasted a sentence from your post and that made for a perfectly good thread title. :)