techie question - i need help, poss virus

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here's hoping someone can help.

My computer has recently become very sluggish when loading internbet pages - i have a 600K connection and it seems as slow as a dial up connection at present. Secondly my homepage never holds in te computer memory and instead it links to the following
http://%6f%75%74%2e%74%72%75%65%2d%63%6f%75%6e%74%65%72%2e%63%6f%6d/%61/?%31%30%31

Whilst booting up the computer it states that a file cannot be found

wininfo.exe or somethibng (i will add the exact file name to the thread later when i reboot the computer).

I run win 98 plus so it isnt the blaster worm. I have zone alarm installed but this doesn't register anything bad as coming on to the computer.

Are there any sweeps i can do or checks on the computer to see if i have a virus??

Any helps or downloads or anything would be most helpful indeed - if anyone needs any more info i will try and get it.

cheers all.

― james, Monday, 25 August 2003 11:07 (twenty-two years ago)

have you opened any e-mail attachments this week? you may have the new Sobig.F virus if so. if you have p2p file-sharing clients installed you could try and obtain a copy of Norton Anti-Virus software and scan your computer for infected files. NAV can also hopefully purge the virus.

― stevem (blueski), Monday, 25 August 2003 11:10 (twenty-two years ago)

jack, the guardian online problem solving person, gets asked this all the time. go look here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/askjack

and flick through the archives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/askjack/story/0,12196,1008886,00.html
is probably the one you're looking for.

andy

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 08:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Perhaps you have spyware? Did you download any free file-sharing or video/sound program, or something sketchy of that sort? Those programs will try and mess with your home page.

That URL you posted is for a site called "true-counter.com". I bet you have spyware. Can you go to Control Panel, click the Add/Remove Programs icon, and see if anything odd is installed on your machine? There's a tool for removing spyware but I don't know what it is offhand.

― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 08:25 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, and DON'T USE INTERNET EXPLORER. the evil hijack sites love it.

Mozilla is your friend.

― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 08:28 (twenty-two years ago)

A-ha. You've been hijacked all right. Is there a program called Gator on your machine? Here is a relevant post from a Google search, someone else had the same problem:

"On the Up side, I'm fixed! I downloaded 'SpyHunter' but they stopped dead in their tracks saying that they did not support "Automation" or "expected interface" even though they showed that I had 83 minibugs and BackWeb problems.
I ran Spybot several times and even though they found 'problems', after I clicked on 'fix selected problems', the items showed up again, immediately. I then downloaded Adaware. They found the problems and I quarantined them and now I seem to be fixed. The culprits were "CoolWeb CSS Hijack" and Gator!
I have no idea how to use the program but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. :)"

So perhaps downloading AdAware would help. I would backup any really important documents and files before running it, just to be on the safe side.

― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 08:34 (twenty-two years ago)

AdAware

This kind of crap is a major pet peeve of mine. You should see the junk programs that end up on the computers in TA offices around here. argh.

― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 08:37 (twenty-two years ago)

daria you are a star - adware it is then

― james (james), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 10:40 (twenty-two years ago)

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