My Ewido alerted me yesterday, that I had picked up a Trojan, so I ran through the hoops:
-Run Trend Micro House Call, Restart.
-Re-Run Ewido, Restart
-Run Windows Online Safety Beta Scanner, Restart
-Run Bit Defender
-Run MS Anti-Spy Beta
-Run Norton, (Which I am deciding has become immeasurably useless of late) Restart.
-Install and Run Zone Alarm, Restart.
After I did the first run with House Call, it picked up on the Trojan again and gave me a message that said it couldn't be cleaned. So I ran it again. The second time it found nothing. All subsequent anti Malware programs found nothing - BUT - my IE is still running...uhm "wrong?" and while I have no Mozilla installed on my computer, I keep getting a message everytime I try to start up IE that "it is not my default browser and would I like to to be?" I have been clicking, "Yes" but each tie I start it it tells me the same thing, so now I am thinking that there is something nefarious still lurking beneath the surface of the keyboard.
I am sorely tempted to dload XP SP2, however, I know it does not "work and play well" with othe machines, but the IT guy at Cascade keeps ranting about how I MUST have it because this Trojan crap wouldn't be happening if I had updated to SP 2.
And yet, I hear those confirming words inside my head, words from :
Michael Kellogg friendly neighborhood Foley Artist and IT guy-Extroardinaire
and
Bryan Seigfreid, Not-so-Local IT Guy Extraordinaire
their words ring inside my head like a siren -"Danger! Danger! Do NOT Load the SP2. Danger! Danger!"
And yet...in a tangled mess of Microsoft foolishness, some how my update - which is configured to only ALERT me of updates and NOT auto update, started an auto update while I was not looking - and you guessed it : it started to dload some xp SP2. I was unable to stop the Dload midway so I just jerked the line outta the wall and that put a stop to it. Funy thing is though...it didn't actually load XP SP2 proper, but only four of the Hotfixes?
Weirdness.
But this is the same time last year, that Windows update did the very same thing to me. It was last May, when Windows update by passed my settings to be alerted and not auto updated and managed to Dload the entire XP SP2 update. I thought at that time, "screw you Bill Gates! I am the one who decides when and what to update, not you." and I prompltly uninstalled XP SP2.
It was like a giant taloned creature (the long arm of Bill Gates?) reached in and dragged out a handful of my computers intrails, leaving a twitching lifeless cadaver in its place. That was a good long telephone call to India, let me tell you!
So I have no desire to repeat it.
But it irks me...aside from my current IE browser issues, that there are four XPSP2 hotfixes in there that I am not sure if I can safely extricate.
Such is Tuesday.
Must teach Art today.
Drive to Portland tomorow to take a friend to her workmans comp evaulation.
Thursday is edit the huge novel for the 7th grade english lit class.
Friday afternoon is drive back to Portland so Blake can go to a Camp Crew Reunion, and drive back home Saturday.
Love to Drive.
Hate to buy gas.
Learn the tune, everyone.
I think we're all going to be singing it sooner and louder than we think.
(Man! I wish my car would run on skim milk.)
I wish my car could run on "natural" gas *burps* ;)
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to let you know... contrary to what others tell you, BM included, I have been updated on all the MS stuff and have had no major issues... actually no issues that I can see. I did lose a hard drive a while back but that was pre XP SP2. It died of other causes. But overall XP SP2 is working otay with me! *thumbsup*
~L~
Well that is a good report. We had XP SP2 on my comp at the ofice and we coudl not load the drivers for some of the really new machines in the office, and some of our media products. The minute our tech uninstalled XP SP2 we were able to load all of the drivers and get the machines to run.
ReplyDeleteI know a guy who won't set up any of his clients networks with out making sure they have XP SP2, he also insists that Norton is still the industry standard, but frankly some of the techs that we work are saying how they have had to clean a bunch of crap out of machines that running Norton. They are telling people to switch to other anti-virus programs like Trend Micro's PC-cillin and Zone Labs Zone Alarm, etc. ANd frankly, I love Ewido for malware removal. I called Microsoft support last time I got hit with that stupid adware and Microsoft told me that , since their malware romoval tool did not find my problem that I needed to go to the ewido.net site and dLoad their removal tool, which she swore woud do the job. She said I needed to run it twice.
She was absolutely right.
It got it and nailed it.
Anyway, I am still not convinced but I am getting hit with some stupid malware right now.
:o/
mih-