Well, not exactly, but close.
I've got a system I have been helping a guy with. His daughter downloaded something that had a trojan. He deleted the program before he enlisted my help... he deleted, not uninstalled.
Anyway, he uses Panda as his AV. Panda did not catch it until after the fact. I had advised him to download and run Spybot and Ad Aware up front, and to scan at housecall.trendmicro.com. he downloaded Spybot and tried, but said it wouldn't let him fix the problems (I think he didn't know what to click). TrendMicro found the trojan, but wasn't able to delete it then.
I went over there and spent an evening working on it. I got Spybot to work, and it found a few things and killed them. I scanned with TrendMicro and found a few instances of the trojan, and cleaned all but one (the computer hung up during that one). I also scanned with Panda, and it found the trojan, but couldn't do anything with it. When I left, he was running trendMicro's Housecall again. he said it got the trojan.
While doing this, I updated His XP with all of the updates he was missing, including the optional ones. he had automatic updates turned on, so it was mainly .Net stuff. After the updates, the computer didn't want to completely boot...
It would boot to desktop, bring up the icons, and then sit there. I had a pointer, and it moved fine, but if I tried to launch anything it would take forever to come up. I made the mistake of trying to launch Task Manager, and repeated the three-finger salute thinking it didn't take, and spent the next 30 minutes killing all the copies of it as they finally started to open. I used System Restore to go back to before the updates (finally) and it worked fine.
Now, this morning he tells me his computer has died. he said it worked fine for his daughter Wednesday, and for him Wednesday evening. Then yesterday he tried to use it and it was back to never finishing coming up. he hasn't tried to go back into safe mode yet, or to try going back to an earlier time in system restore.
I am at a loss as what the problem is, and am open to suggestions. And, No, formatting it and reinstalling is not an option.
I've got a system I have been helping a guy with. His daughter downloaded something that had a trojan. He deleted the program before he enlisted my help... he deleted, not uninstalled.
Anyway, he uses Panda as his AV. Panda did not catch it until after the fact. I had advised him to download and run Spybot and Ad Aware up front, and to scan at housecall.trendmicro.com. he downloaded Spybot and tried, but said it wouldn't let him fix the problems (I think he didn't know what to click). TrendMicro found the trojan, but wasn't able to delete it then.
I went over there and spent an evening working on it. I got Spybot to work, and it found a few things and killed them. I scanned with TrendMicro and found a few instances of the trojan, and cleaned all but one (the computer hung up during that one). I also scanned with Panda, and it found the trojan, but couldn't do anything with it. When I left, he was running trendMicro's Housecall again. he said it got the trojan.
While doing this, I updated His XP with all of the updates he was missing, including the optional ones. he had automatic updates turned on, so it was mainly .Net stuff. After the updates, the computer didn't want to completely boot...
It would boot to desktop, bring up the icons, and then sit there. I had a pointer, and it moved fine, but if I tried to launch anything it would take forever to come up. I made the mistake of trying to launch Task Manager, and repeated the three-finger salute thinking it didn't take, and spent the next 30 minutes killing all the copies of it as they finally started to open. I used System Restore to go back to before the updates (finally) and it worked fine.
Now, this morning he tells me his computer has died. he said it worked fine for his daughter Wednesday, and for him Wednesday evening. Then yesterday he tried to use it and it was back to never finishing coming up. he hasn't tried to go back into safe mode yet, or to try going back to an earlier time in system restore.
I am at a loss as what the problem is, and am open to suggestions. And, No, formatting it and reinstalling is not an option.