Viruses, AVG 6.0 free ?'s

[AndyB404]

I have someone who has me working on their pc. It is a Dell 800lr or something like that. It has Windows ME on it. I installed AVG 6 free edition on the pc cause his norton wasnt working do to the viruses on his pc. I ran the test scan and it came up with 28 viruses, mostly trojan horse proggy's. I was able to heal most of them, but some were not able to be put in the virus vault. Now should i just scan again and find out where these files are and maually delete them or is there another option i can do? Also if he decides to upgrade to winxp, he wants to do a fresh install. He would like to know sonce he cannot find the cds for certain software, can he just burn the program folders and files to a cd and some how manually install them back? Thanks.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

He can't manually reinstall the programs uless he has installers... being on the CD for the most part.

And the virus' he could try an online scan:
http://www.pandasoftware.com/actives..._principal.htm
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/hous...start_corp.asp


Adaware and Spybot might also be a good idea if he don't have them.

[AndyB404]

Thanks for the advice. I guess its either keep ME and clean it up as best as i can or he will just have to find those damned CDs. lol. I dont want to go online being that he has a lot of trojan horse programs and no firewall. He has a router and DSL but i think he got this stuff from an open port in his router. thats the next thing i am going to check. Thanks.

[Karnevil9]

I have found that most virus's that AVG can't remove to the vault are because they are on a needed part of the system. I would run the scan again anyway to see if it still picks them up, but I would be careful about deleting anything until you are sure it is a not a necessary program.

I am not sure if a software program can be placed on another system by transferring the folders to CD. When others reply perhaps they will have more insight on this. One thought that comes to mind Though, he may be able to partition the hard drive using a program like partition magic, Put XP on the new partition, and then use the data magic tool to move all his data from one OS to the other and then delete the ME OS and fill the HD with XP. There may be simpler ways.

[glc]

Some programs will run, others won't - it all depends on the program.

[AndyB404]

so if i cant delete the files that are trojan horses, how do i get rid of them?

[Karnevil9]

Maybe you can try some suggestions or links here.

http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/security/trojan.html

[AndyB404]

Well I found out the reason i couldnt get rid of some of the trojans was that they were embedded in the system restore folder. So i turned off system restore and i could delete them. Yah for me! lol. Now i just have the job of cleaning the pc up. I need to get rid of old files he doesnt want, old programs, and whatever else needs to be deleted. Thanks for all the help guys.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

I get to do that(clean it up so I don't have to reformat) to a friends windows 98 machine... never delt with Windows 98, so I only hope I don't break it, as she will kill me

[VietBob]

Originally posted by AndyB404 Thanks for the advice. I guess its either keep ME and clean it up as best as i can or he will just have to find those damned CDs. lol. I dont want to go online being that he has a lot of trojan horse programs and no firewall. He has a router and DSL but i think he got this stuff from an open port in his router. thats the next thing i am going to check. Thanks.

If it's a NAT router, and it doesn't sound like he would have messed with the defaults, most ports are probably closed. Zone Alarm offers an outstanding free version (the link above saves you about five pages of "don't you really want to BUY something?!!") - particularly with a broadband connection, you can't have too much protection. (I recommend buying ZoneAlarm Pro - the extra features are well worth the nominal cost - but for basic protection the free version does fine!) And once the bad things are running on your system, a NAT router won't do squat about OUTGOING traffic.

And as the Avenger mentioned, Ad-Aware is a "must-have," particularly for people who like to try lots of "free" software, download a great deal of unknown stuff, or do a great deal of surfing.

-Bob