Woe Is Me

[TheAbominatrix]

Okay, let's cut to the chase here. My computer is freaking out, and I think I may have been hacked. There's porn everywhere. When I 'open link in new window', I occasionally get rerouted to a porn site, a different one everytime. Even though I have AdMuncher set to prevent sites from adding themselves to my favorites, I get four of five sites added every so often, sites I've never even visited, and my friggin homepage keeps setting itself to some search site, no matter how many times I reset it.

I ran AdAware, and I got a ride of about 15 things that way. I ran a free online virus checker, and found that I had a trojan, which it removed (and cleaned the usual 600 instances of the PE Partite virus, which I just cannot get rid of).

So does anyone know how I can fix this?

[Flying Mullet]

The easy way(although this will miss a lot of programs hidden on your computer) is to go through the "Add/Remove Programs" in your control panel and remove any suspicious looking programs. Most suspicious ones don't register there though so this will only help slightly.

[TheAbominatrix]

Thanks, I'll do that before I head to bed in a second. Even a little bit of help will be worth it. Yay for Mullet.

[Dr Unne]

Things randomly changing in your browser isn't likely a hacker, it's more likely some kind of spyware or virus that's automatically doing it. I don't know if anyone would waste their time doing something that ridiculous to you by hand. Try different spyware-removal programs, not just one, because some of them find different versions of spyware than others.

Trojans = bad though. The only sure way to remove viruses is to format your hard drive (i.e. completely erase everything) and reinstall Windows from scratch. If you have a trojan, it's definitely a good idea to do that, because who knows what's going on if someone is backdoored into your PC. Virus detectors / cleaners are handy, unless the virus happens to mess with the virus detection program itself, so even that isn't a sure way to get rid of one. Just my opinion though, I'm admittedly a bit more paranoid than most people.

[Endless]

<a href="http://www.f-prot.com/download/home_user/">F-Prot for DOS</a> on write protected floppies + write protected boot floppy = free and sure way to scan a computer.
If you can't load the av (I had that happen on a computer I was asked to fix), rename it.

[TheAbominatrix]

Thanks Unne and Vivi, I'll definitly try out those suggestions. I'm gonna hold off on a complete reformat, though I know my comp really needs it. I should be getting a CDR drive for Christmas, then I can transfer everything I need to keep onto data discs, and then just reformat the whole thing.

Again, thanks so much everyone.

[Dr Unne]

Even when backing things up, be sure you don't back up files that have viruses, or you could be reinfecting yourself when you restore from your backup, I.e., don't backup programs, just backup data, like text and music files and whatnot, that's likely to be safe if anything is.

[TheAbominatrix]

That's the plan, but thanks for the warning. Basically its going to be everything I cant just redownload quickly. Music, text files, and pictures. Everything else must go!

[Yamaneko]

You could also try using Partition Magic, make a small partition on your HD, transfer all your needed files there, reformat your main partition, install Windows, transfer your files from the second partition to your fresh install of Windows, then finally combine both partitions again.

[Peegee]

Yes but partition magic doesn't work if she only has one hard drive, right? You can't just partition free data into a separate 'hard drive' unless the hard drive partition is either free or empty (ie free).

Or so I think :P

[TheAbominatrix]

Ah, it doesnt matter. But again, thank you guys so so much for helping me. I really appreciate it. I got most of the stuff under control, but I'm getting a compy for Christmas. Early Christmas. Yay Jesus' birthday.

[edczxcvbnm]

Originally posted by TheAbominatrix
That's the plan, but thanks for the warning. Basically its going to be everything I cant just redownload quickly. Music, text files, and pictures. Everything else must go!

Maybe it was a music or video file that gave you these problems. I know when downloading stuff on KaZaA that sometimes the video or music files are encoded to execute some part of the file automatically and all sorts of crazy things have happened.

It automatically opened up a web page.
Tried to download something.
Put a bunch of porno pictures and video files all over my computer(really small files)

It could be stuff as simple as that which caused all these problems.

[Peegee]

Well if that were the case ash ash would notice. I know I've downloaded mp3s that opened webpages every time they were played. Grrr..irritating.