Network Problem

[Markoman01027]

Hey everybody,

My brother's computer has a big problem. All of a sudden, he has lost his internet connection. We are connected through LAN. The NIC gets a connection, and the router says that his connection is OK. But AIM or IE cannot get a connection. He is urnning Windows ME. He has a lot of spyware installed on his PC and a few viruses that AVG cannot remove. The net was running fine a few days ago, and he did nothing to cause this problem.

I reinstalled his NIC, I replugged his wires, and I resetted IE settings and no help. I ran out of ideas. Any help? TIA.

[Markoman01027]

scanreg /restore did the trick.

[GaryRouth]

If you have a Norton 2003 or 2004 bootable CD, you can boot his computer from that, it will be able to run an Emergency scan from DOS. This does not install Norton on the system, just scans it & leaves a directory with the results (named Ncdtree, I think). You should be able to manually download and put the latest virus definitions onto floppies from a system with a current sub to Norton, and have the Emergency scan use definitions from the a: drive. This same proceedure should work for most of the major AntiVirus vendors: Norton, McAffee, TrendMicro, etc.

I wonder if it's the qhosts virus. If your brother knows which viruses wouldn't remove, and if that was one of them, you can also try downloading and running the qhosts removal tool from the Symantec (Norton) website.

Also, if the spyware is still there, might want to put AdAware or Search&Destroy on a CD or floppy & install & run to remove the unwanted visitors.
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For a quick fix, though, since his PC is running WindowsME - you could try System Restore first: and if that works go straight to the HouseCall online scanner - that should find & remove his current infections http://housecall.trendmicro.com

Once the system is running OK, he's going to need to disable System Restore, run another complete AntiVirus scan [because viruses can get restored from there], and then re-enable System Restore.
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Best of luck
. . . Gary

[late Edit: just saw your post that scanreg/restore fixed things: always nice when the quick fix works (System Restore is similiar to scanreg/restore). I still recommend a visit to HouseCall and the anti-spyware work]

[Markoman01027]

Thanks for the reply Gary. I am not sure what type of virus he has. But right now, I am scanning his system with Housecall, then gonna try AVG again, and completely do a system scan with spybot and adaware.