Had a big scare with XP yesterday...

[altpath]

Hey everybody, I'm a new member, and I'm an alcoholic. Oh, wait, wrong board.

Actually, like I said above, I had a big scare yesterday. I'm not very educated in computers, since in the past I've only used windows 95-98. Well I got a friend of mine to build a comp for me a couple of months ago and I have windows xp pro. Anyway, I was surfing the net the night before last, and my connection was unusually fast, almost like a broadband connection. I have a dial-up modem. Well, I thought it was strange, but didn't pay any attention to it. I shut down the comp and the next morning I turned it on and found my administrator account was gone! I could go into the account, but only my desktop wallpaper showed up, and all the icons were gone. I closed my session and logged into one of my other sub accounts and checked the hard drive. I went into documents and settings, and placed the cursor over the administrator folder, and it said the folder was empty! It scared the crap out of me since all my important files are in that account so I tried looking for my programs to retrieve deleted files, but couldn't use them since I didn't have administrator privileges. Eventually, I closed my session in the sub account and tried the main account again, and it was back. That was yesterday, and today it happened again. Last night my connection was fast again(I always use the admin. account to surf the net). I have the feeling it's going to happen again, and I'm afraid it won't resolve itself one of these days.

What could be causing this problem, and what can I do to stop it????
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Steve-O

[sitlet]

sounds like the sasser virus: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/05/05/sasser.worm/index.html

MS has a fix for it somewhere on there site.

[altpath]

thanks, I'm going to get the patch right now.

How do you think I got the virus? I'm running zonealarm and nothing gets out or in without it alerting me.

Also, speaking of viri, I'm sure I've got another I can't get rid of. I keep getting "page cannot be displayed" 60% of the time I attempt to open a new web page. About half an hour ago, I saw at the bottom of the IE that it was opening a file in my local drives program files. That's a virus right?

By the way, right now I've got Avast! Antivirus software. How does that stand up to Norton?

[sitlet]

never heard of avast, so i dont know anything about how it works. i would run Lavasoft's Ad-Aware for the other problem. sounds like you got some spyware trying to change the internet explorer settings.

as for the sasser virus, i dont know how it works, but ive heard that it can get on your computer without you even knowing about it. you dont get it from an email or from downloading something, it just gets on there. i believe the only way to stop from getting it is to use a hardware firewall.

[Cobra]

Sasser spreads by contacting other machines and forcing them to download it and thereby infecting them. It does this by infecting "LSASS.EXE" - Windows Security manager (or something). Any machine patched against it cannot be infected, I believe.

Also, software firewalls such as ZoneAlarm will stop it dead. I have my ZoneAlarm set to "Stealth Mode" on both Internet and Trusted zones, and I have stopped many viruses that used to try to infect me like LoveGat.

I also use Norton, and I find it is outstanding at stopping viruses.

Also, speaking of virii

Ahh, someone else who uses what should be the correct pluralisation of "virus". Except it isn't right. Why?!

Cobra

[indolikaa]

Also, speaking of virii

Ahh, someone else who uses what should be the correct pluralisation of "virus". Except it isn't right. Why?!

Beats me!

Here in the US, viruses is preferred usage, according to the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=virus

[snafu099]

I keep getting "page cannot be displayed" 60% of the time I attempt to open a new web page

This may be way off track and only a coienceadense (sp)
I was using Incredimail email program and did an online update.
After checking email and closing the program, it still resides in memory and shows icon in systray. huge cpu hog I guess as ie would time out and show error. Since have uninstall and re installed newest version plus try to surf first then do email.

[altpath]

Hey guys, thanks for the info. I don't know if it was the virus but soon after my last post, I was completely unable to surf the net. The modem connected and so did my MSN messenger, but the IE constantly gave me the page cannot be displayed thing. I just decided to format my hard drive and install XP again. I've just gotten back online a few minutes ago, everything seems to be ok now.

To sitlet, I did have Lavasofts Ad-aware, but it never seemed to have found that virus. I found the Avast! antivirus from snapfiles.com, same place where I found Ad-aware.

To cobra, I also had my zonealarm in stealth mode on both settings, but that virus still got in I guess.

By the way, how can I reinstall the keyboard drivers? I set it to english when I was formatting the hard drive and should have put it to spanish keyboard, as that's what I have. The key configuration is all screwy.

[Cobra]

To cobra, I also had my zonealarm in stealth mode on both settings, but that virus still got in I guess.

Damn, you were obviously unlucky. Maybe you've accidentally granted a comms permission to something unsavoury? Have a look, just in case.

As for the keyboard, I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that one. Sorry.

Cobra