doug Posted February 27, 2011 Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 Had a panic phone call from daughter late last night. She had just started to do some work on her PC when it froze leaving a message along the lines "your computer has been infected, click on the link to download the system recovery tools, £60." She said her Avast (free) seemed to have been disabled. I sadi NO don't do anything 'till I get there.I managed to do a re-start and by tapping F8 got boot options screen, chose the repair button and seleted the restore option. choe the day before which was for the Widows critical update option. This seemed to go OK and finished up with her password log-in screen. This I activated but only resulted in a pale blue blank screen. So I resorted to a manual re-boot from the re-bbot button on the case. This time after the F8 "trick" I chose Safe Mode with Networking. downloaded the Trend Housecall and selected the 64 bit option. The scan said no threats detected. Then did a software normal re-boot. everything came up normall, so I left as she then started to do the work she had started.I presume everythin was then OK. She and G'son are out this morning - Rugby and he's only 7. So is there anything else I should have done or now do to make everything safe for when I ring her? Not sure what her back-up situation is, which I will rectify. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted February 27, 2011 Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 dougJust to be on the safe side you could run a full (updated) MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (free version) scan ?/>http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digerati Posted February 27, 2011 Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 She said her Avast (free) seemed to have been disabledThat's scary. I've been real happy with Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), and the new v2 is even better. And since updates come through Windows Update, users find it easy to use. I suspect this was just an unwanted popup trying to get her to click and buy their product. It may even be a legitimate product in the sense it is not malicious - just lousy marketing tactics. I agree with Boris and would install and run MBAM too. Then, if she ever gets this or a similar popup again, she can manually run supplemental scans with MSE and verify with MBAM. If clean, she can just close the popup with the Red X. You did not provide specifics, but I would ensure the system is fully updated and patched. And now that IE9 is out of beta, if using Vista or Win7, I don't have a problem recommending IE9RC. It has a pretty decent popup blocker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doug Posted February 27, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 She, like me, uses firefox most of the time. I wouldn't have worried if it was just a pop-up, but as it seems to have partially disabled her system and the Avast protection is why I told her not to do anything until I got there. As you say Digerati "Scary!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belatucadrus Posted February 27, 2011 Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 I'd schedule a "Boot time scan" for avast! just to be on the safe side and make sure the Web shield is active. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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