Looking for advice Re Spyware

Archeron

Hi there,
Hope this is the right forum. I'm hoping to ask for help from anyone that may have come across this problem.

Currently running Win XP Home, IE 5.0. My machines background seems to have been hi-jacked. Instead of the usual background picture (sunset, tropical island etc) all I have is a jet black screen with a warning about potential spyware on my machine. This seems to be a hyper link, as if you click on the warning, it tries to take you online to site selling spyware packages. I've ran anti-virus and anti-spyware prgrammes, (different ones) numerous times, and while it always detects and removes tonnes of spyware, nothing seems to get this thing off the machine. Whats really annoying now is that the taskbar randomly shoots out warnings (with the little ! in a yellow triangle) saying "spyware detected on your machine, click here to remove) which then brings you to the same website. When it does this, it crashes any software that I'm using, and you can imagine how annoying this is.
I'm on the verge of wiping the entire machine and re-installing a new copy of windows, but this will be a pain due to the amount of software I'd have to re-install.
Any advice would be very much appreicated.

branners69

Go here and download and run all the Anti-spyware packages..

It can take an age but it will be quicker then doing a re-install..

Any questions/problems pm me;)

Archeron

branners69 wrote:

Go here and download and run all the Anti-spyware packages..

It can take an age but it will be quicker then doing a re-install..

Any questions/problems pm me;)

thank you kindly. I'll try that this evening, and I'll let you know if its a success.

branners69

You may find you cannot load up internet explorer cos of the spyware, if you can try using another browser such as firefox ( I'd highly recommend this one!!)

Alternatively download them progs in work if you can!!

If you dont have access to another browser or pc then download Hijackthis as its the smallest download (I think)

Write down/print out the url so as you can type it into your browser when you get home:
http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html

Sometimes I find you may get seconds or minutes online before it crashes so the quicker you are the better!!

When you have cleaned your pc make sure you install a firewall and antivirus software!! You will find freebies on the link I sent you above!!

And finally remember to keep uptodate and run the spyware programmes at least once every two weeks aswell;)

blorg

That's Spy Sherriff. Seen it on two computers; guy I work with got it and multiple people tried for a week to get rid of it but failed. He got a new computer and his old one was wiped. I also personally tried on another computer and did get rid of it _eventually_ but left Windows unstable in the process. I would suggest a re-install for this one personally.

branners69

blorg wrote:

That's Spy Sherriff.

Any idea how he got it??

Was it installed via a programme or is there an XP security update on the way??

aido_2006

had the same problem, was spider spyware or something and it stuck to my desktop and neither ad-aware or spybot could take it off... ended up just doing a system restore to previous day and that sorted it for me...

Scruff

sounds like it its a variant of smitfraud. Horrible bugger that took me ages to kill

finall managed to kill it, look at the thread i posted here for links on how to kill it: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054898377

Tom Dunne

Archeron wrote:

Instead of the usual background picture (sunset, tropical island etc) all I have is a jet black screen with a warning about potential spyware on my machine. This seems to be a hyper link, as if you click on the warning, it tries to take you online to site selling spyware packages. I've ran anti-virus and anti-spyware prgrammes, (different ones) numerous times, and while it always detects and removes tonnes of spyware, nothing seems to get this thing off the machine.

I remember fixing a PC for someone before Christmas with that background picture. To fix it, I had to do the following:

Right-click on desktop, select properties.

Choose the Desktop tab, then click on Customize Desktop.

In the General Items box, select the Web tab - it should show the bogey website that is being displayed as your background.

Untick this and re-run the spyware/AV programs.

That should go some way to sorting out your problem.

Archeron

Nice one Tom Dunne, done that and it worked 100% perfect. Much appreciate the advice.

weemcd

happened the other day to a mate. System restored it to the day before. sorted.