Desktop wallpaper hijacked

[qw111]

Running windows xp
My wallpaper on my computer changed itself to a white background with a box in the middle that states "warning spyware detected on your computer". I ran spybot and had it removed and changed the background back to normal. After booting up my comp a few hours after, the same thing occured and i had to run spybot to fix it. I'm looking for a way to permanently fix this, not temporarily.

Thanks for reading. Any help is appreciated.

Also, my virus scanner (PC-cillin: its pretty old and not really up to date) picked up something called EXPL_SSLICE.GEN. Not sure if it's related but it popped up in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Osiris]

http://www.techist.com/forums/f51/spyware-removal-guide-osiris-updated-8-18-2008-a-165828/

 

[qw111]

update: my comp keeps freezing a minute or 2 after starting up. what can i do?

 

[Amd2800]

Backup all your data and reinstall XP With SP3 or Vista With SP1

 

[qw111]

I am on my second harddrive atm, if i connect my primary harddrive and get some data off it, will the virus/spyware go to my second harddrive?

 

[ElDiPablo]

I would quickly download Malwarebytes as well as the manual updater for it to a USB thumb drive from a non-infected workstation, then install it from your USB on your infected workstation, and manually update it.

After Malwarebytes cleans it up and reboots, run another scan with Spybot.

Replace your out of date AV with a good one. I like AVG (Its free)


-EDP

I am on my second harddrive atm, if i connect my primary harddrive and get some data off it, will the virus/spyware go to my second harddrive?

If you are worried about that, I would suggest using a Live CD to boot up with. That way the infection won't load itself into memory.

-EDP

 

[Osiris]

update: my comp keeps freezing a minute or 2 after starting up. what can i do?

go thru the msconfig section in the guide, no need to wipe your drive

 

[iluminatus]

Just a quick question - Do you downlaod torrents ? p2p ? If you do, make sure you scan your files before you open them. I personally scan with Kaspersky and Avira.Avira is doing a great job finding trojans and bots.

 

[Redmo0n]

Torrents are generally fine. As long as you don't use Limewire/Bearshare/Other and are careless with it.

Also iluminatus, it's not good to use 2 anti viruses at the same time as it can cause conflict issues. Just throwing it out.

 

[skele89]

Got a very similar (if not the same) virus on the family computer when my brother downloaded porn off limewire. We ended up just formatting and reloading, couldn't be bothered with trying to fix.

We did copy all of our unsuspicious documents, videos, photos and program installation files over to a USB flash drive or something in safe mode (cant remember how we did it exactly but i think we had trouble using usb flash drives in safe mode) before we formatted the hard drive and none of those files seemed to be infected. I dont think it infects those sort of files...

If your second hard drive doesn't contain any program files, i doubt it will be infected unless that is where the virus originated from...

Also i'd disconnect that computer from any network too...

EDIT: By the way, this isn't just spyware, its a full on trojan horse (from memory...)