Forum rules
Welcome to the Leverguns.Com General Discussions Forum. This is a high-class place so act respectable. We discuss most anything here other than politics... politely.
Please post political post in the new Politics forum.
Well fellas, I may not be on the forum much this week. Yesterday I had just turned on my computer, checked out my work and personal e-mails, did a little surfing, and was about to log on here when I got some strange virus alert pop up. It was not the software my work provides, so I suspected it itself was the virus, trying to get me to link to it. I did not, but a minute later got the dreaded "blue screen of death" on my computer. I immediately flipped the wireless switch and yanked the battery. However, every time I try to boot up now it immediately launches the pop-ups, followed quickly by another blue screen. I am on my wife's computer now, so will try to keep in touch this way.
I know we are not supposed to advocate violence on this forum, and Hobie just warned us again to obey the rules. However, if I ever find one of these little pukes who writes these viruses and other malware, I won't just be advocating violence - I'll be committing some!
IF you don't have clean back ups of all your data you can dl puppy linux and burn to a cd as an iso and make the bios boot from the cd drive first, and you can power up and recover all your files.
I'd use a virgin external hard drive or large enough thumb drive to quarentine your files because you might xfr the virus. at least you can recover all the images. doc files may be toast, but if the virus isn't too sophisticated they won't be infected with the original os shut down. don't xfr any dlls or exes, no program files.
then a clean install of the os should work, but I know of cases where the hd is toast....
hope you get your personal stuff back ok... any idea how the virus got to ya? your router should have a decent firewall. perhaps your wireless signal is getting "used" by a "neighbor"?
. . . Grizz
the Good Confession >The Only Begotten Son of God >
I had this bug hit me today on a newspaper site. The site was apparently hacked to provide a medium to infect lots of computers. No, you don't have to do ANYTHING to get bit by this one. My Avast AV stopped it so I didn't have to clean up any mess(this time) but it gets by some AV programs. The good news is this particular bug doesn't seem to damage the document and jpg files. It just hijacks the OS/IE/Firefox(yes it hijacks Firefox). The bad news, it's a (expletive deleted) to get out of your system after it takes hold without resorting to remote AV operations. The easiest way is to take the hard drive out and scan it remotely to remove it. It might (I've never done it this way) be possible to do it with a controlled entry into safe mode where you decide what programs are loaded. It will load if you just let safe mode start normally, so you have to do it controlling what programs load and your AV might be able to take it out. It can also be removed (sometimes) via networking but you have to be real careful not to have it spread to the networked computer.
"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work."
If you are running WINDOWS XP, it has a "Restore", or "Go BACK" function that allows you to return your computer to its condition on an earlier date. ...if you can get past the popups to implement the restoration...
Shawn
"That's right, Billy, I'm good with it. I hit what I shoot at, and I'm fast!"-Lucas McCain, c1882.
IIRC Jay is using a company laptop and I don't think he can install any programs in it as he's not the admin.
I haven't seen the blue screen in years. I didn't know they still did that. Guess I'll be careful where i go.
Rusty pegged it - this is a company laptop. Even if I knew how - which I don't - I'm not allowed to monkey with it. I called our help desk, and we did try to launch it in safe mode, also tried the "last known working configuration". Nada. I don't think this was someone getting past my wireless router - several of my neighbors also use wireless routers without password protection. I think it was a website I went to that then hit me.
several of my neighbors also use wireless routers without password protection
several of your neighbors don't carry firearms and there's a chance they will regret that also.
please think about this: you need a router with a spi firewall that rejects everything that originates from the outside, you need to use a secure type of password, you need to use MAC address filtering, and to be more secure you should bag the wireless and use only wired connections.
most any your neighbors whose open connections you can see can easily penetrate most wireless connections, including those with spi firewalls, passwords, the type of encrycption that comes bundled these days, and MAC address filtering with simple scripts available on the internet. hence the reason I shut off the wifi and use cat6 cables for the boxes running on my net.
That's a good idea Grizz. My wife runs her laptop off of our wireless network here at the house. I see what you're saying that the CatV would be a better way to go. I might have to do something about that.
If you're gonna be stupid ya gotta be tough-
Isiah 55:8&9
It's easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.
Of course, Jay, in some occupations the Blue Screen of Death can be real bad Ju-Ju, like when you're on final approach...
Tom
'A Man's got to have a code...
I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted and I won't be laid a hand on.
I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." -John Bernard Books. Jan. 22, 1901
Reminds me of the story about "If Microsoft Built Cars".
One of the nastiest surprises I had recently was some flavor of Linux I installed on an old computer had a screensaver that would come on after a while, and the images were those BSOD messages, and some Mac error stuff like it, etc.
After my blood pressure went down as soon as I moved the mouse and saw what it was, I thought it was pretty funny.
Have you guys heard about Seagates 7200.11 hard disk problem? Basically the big seagates with sd15 firmware will turn into "bricks" at power on. Once you have "bricked" the drive then the only way to get it working is to send it to Seagate for new firmware.
Basically if you have bought a large seagate disk drive in the last 6 months, go do a search on 7200.11 disk failures and get scared!
I will say that they recovered my "bricked" drive but my warm and fuzzy feeling is not there.
Idahoser wrote:I've come to the point where I won't buy a hard disk that wasn't made by WD.
Maxtor for me...
Tom
'A Man's got to have a code...
I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted and I won't be laid a hand on.
I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." -John Bernard Books. Jan. 22, 1901
I'm still running on 16" Winchester Platter Stacks...
What?
C2N14... because life is not energetic enough. מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין Daniel 5:25-28... Got 7.62?
Not Depressed enough yet? Go read National Geographic, July 1976 Gott und Gewehr mit uns!
Old Ironsights wrote:I'm still running on 16" Winchester Platter Stacks...
OI, and I bet you still Habla Fortran y Cobol tambien!
Tom
'A Man's got to have a code...
I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted and I won't be laid a hand on.
I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." -John Bernard Books. Jan. 22, 1901
Old Ironsights wrote:I'm still running on 16" Winchester Platter Stacks...
OI, and I bet you still Habla Fortran y Cobol tambien!
Nah. Just Turbo Pascal...
C2N14... because life is not energetic enough. מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין Daniel 5:25-28... Got 7.62?
Not Depressed enough yet? Go read National Geographic, July 1976 Gott und Gewehr mit uns!
Yea, I know the feeling. Yesterday I started getting a pop up that my computer was in danger of attack and to stop it just click the little button to access the right software. I ran my anti spyware, but everytime I ran it again, the thing was still there. One trick I've learned is using the "restore" function. It takes the computer back to an earlier date before things went wrong. That got rid of the spyware long enought for me to run a complete virus scan and deep spyware scan. The critter seems to be dead, but you never know.
Jeepnik AKA "Old Eyes"
"Go low, go slow and preferably in the dark" The old Sarge (he was maybe 24.
"Freedom is never more that a generation from extinction" Ronald Reagan
"Every man should have at least one good rifle and know how to use it" Dad
jeepnik wrote:Yea, I know the feeling. Yesterday I started getting a pop up that my computer was in danger of attack and to stop it just click the little button to access the right software. I ran my anti spyware, but everytime I ran it again, the thing was still there. One trick I've learned is using the "restore" function. It takes the computer back to an earlier date before things went wrong. That got rid of the spyware long enought for me to run a complete virus scan and deep spyware scan. The critter seems to be dead, but you never know.
jeepnik - sounds like what happened to me, except I never got the chance to run my virus scan or start up with a previous configuration. Good news - work restaged my laptop so I should have it back tomorrow!
16" Winchester platter stacks? How many on here have worked with those? I have. First system was an IBM 1130 with 12k of core. It initially had a single 16" platter. Was later upgraded to a stand alone multi-stack drive. Ran under Fortran. I still use a lot of COBOL on our IRS mainframes.
MikeS.
Master Mason
Worshipful Master of Triluminar Lodge 117
Jefferson county, WV.
MikeS. wrote:16" Winchester platter stacks? How many on here have worked with those? I have. First system was an IBM 1130 with 12k of core. It initially had a single 16" platter. Was later upgraded to a stand alone multi-stack drive. Ran under Fortran. I still use a lot of COBOL on our IRS mainframes.
I've removed quite a few from service... The platters make really cool Art (generally Clocks & Mirrors).
C2N14... because life is not energetic enough. מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין Daniel 5:25-28... Got 7.62?
Not Depressed enough yet? Go read National Geographic, July 1976 Gott und Gewehr mit uns!