anyone know what this might be?

flogen

I'm having problems with my laptop, and I'm pretty certain it's some kind of virus or spyware, but I can't seem to find it on the system.

I get avg free and did a scan, got rid of a few trojan files, got a decent firewall in place, and have also done an ad-aware scan and a spybot scan. At this point the PC looks to be cleaned out entirely, but when I connect it to the internet, it works for a minute or two and then just stops. What's wierd is that it seems to be disabling my modem, because I have my PC connected to the same one, and once the laptop stops, the PC stops too.
the virus scan seems to find a trojan file every now and again, as if it is dormant and then becomes active, I know it's nothing I just downloaded because I;'ve gotten the warnings at times when I'm not online, so it must be on the computer somewhere. Anyone able to help me figure what's going on with the thing? I was thinking of just rebooting the whole thing, but I'd rather solve the problem for once rather than take the easy way out!

It's running Windows XP pro by the way, and (now) has all the latest updates including sp 2

Thanks
flogen

Capt'n Midnight

could be lots of things,
one to try is the microsoft anti spyware beta thing too, it seems to scan the system restore folders better than some of the others - system restore can also restore nasties from time to time

Shane O' Malley

I would agree. Try the Microsoft Spyware blocker.

I installed it on a machine i was pretty sure was clean and it showed up new reg entries etc belonging to spyware.

Not sure why adaware did'nt find them and i am not sure they were active but worth a go.

Shane

the_syco

Try disconnecting from the net, go into safe mode, and do a scan from trojans, spyware, etc. Sometimes it "hides" in legit tasks, so scans in normal mode doesn't seem them.

osmethod

I'm sorry to be negative but I'd re-install the Os fresh. Sounds like you've done alot of scanning/cleaning and one can never know the extent the damage has got too. It can be difficult to rid a system completely and you can never be certain its gone.

Only consolation to re-install : System IS clean....

osmethod

flogen

osmethod wrote:

I'm sorry to be negative but I'd re-install the Os fresh. Sounds like you've done alot of scanning/cleaning and one can never know the extent the damage has got too. It can be difficult to rid a system completely and you can never be certain its gone.

Only consolation to re-install : System IS clean....

osmethod

yeah, but that's what I always do and I recently made a conscious decision to widen my computer knowledge, both hardware and software based so that my next PC will be one I built myself from scratch (and when it's running I can take care of it better than before). I have some hardware knowledge and some software knowledge but much more to get through!
Besides, from past experience there's nothing better than manually cleaning out your PC and getting the job done. It makes you feel like you've just kicked those 12 year old morons who infected it in the nuts.
I will reinstall it if it comes to it, but so far I don't think it's in a bad enough situation

Webmonkey

When you say the internet stops working after a minute or two, do you mean It does not respond, page cannot be displayed with no traffic through your modem or is there so much traffic going through your modem that you don't get sufficent bandwidth to do anything. Is it a network you have that both PC and Laptop going through same modem? Is it Broadband modem you're using?

Webmonkey

flogen

Webmonkey wrote:

When you say the internet stops working after a minute or two, do you mean It does not respond, page cannot be displayed with no traffic through your modem or is there so much traffic going through your modem that you don't get sufficent bandwidth to do anything. Is it a network you have that both PC and Laptop going through same modem? Is it Broadband modem you're using?

Webmonkey

The former, it wouldn't respond. it's not a network, I just have a zxyel modem with an ethernet and usb connection, I tend to use both at times.

I downloaded the microsoft spyware dealey (danke to those who suggested it). it found a total of 19 dodgy items, most of which (18, i think) were a high or severe threat. Since then I've been surfing without trouble for a good 20 minutes longer than before (except for a few seconds of downtime which may well have actually been a connection issue). So that seems to have done the trick, if not a safe mode search is next up and after that I plan on opening up the hard drive and manually cleaning it with bleach...
Thanks again!