Personal Antivirus - DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT

[PepperElf]

Mom called me today to help with the computer.

Normally she doesn't download weird things but today she got one of those popups that says "you have this virus! download this software!" and she downloaded it.

The software of course tells her that she has all these viruses and she should buy the full version to fix it.

Thankfully she called me within 5 minutes.

I was able to walk her through getting to the task manager to turn the program off and then ... she couldn't find it on the add/remove software so...

I know it wasn't the cleanest uninstal cos the registry still hasn't been adjusted, but I had her locate the file - pav.exe and just delete it and empty the trash.


when i see her next i'll see about cleaning up the registry. however that's one thing i won't walk her through.


but anyway, if you see pav.exe avoid it like the plague.
i looked it up online and apparently it's a worm or something like that.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Thankfully my wife askes me about installing these programs, even the ligitimate ones. It never hurts being too careful these days.

[MadMike]

There's a whole family of those, including Antivirus 2009 & Antivirus 360. It seems like just about ever week, I have to go see my one friend because someone in her family got one of the computers infected with that shit. Malwarebytes seems to work quite well on all of those. If I'm lucky, that's all I have to run, and then we're free to just hang out and drink.

One time she actually managed to go almost 2 weeks without any computer problems. When she did call me, I told her "I was beginning to think you didn't love me anymore!"

[PepperElf]

yah mom normally doesn't do that... we're both glad she called me within 5 mintues so nothing was damaged yet

and i told her ... next time call me first
normally she does.


but if anything at least i got her to turn off some of the programs that were automatically starting up. =)

[technical.angel]

MalwareBytes seconded!! It's worked wonders! Try booting it into safe mode (F8) if you can, but you probably won't be able to.

[lordlundar]

My parents and I have an agreement. The download something like that, and I take away their WiFi Card (no other means of connecting to the net with that machine.)

[Geek King]

Another vote for MalwareBytes here.

I remove at least one of these a week. My current most hated version is WinPC Antivirus. Not particularly dangerous as far as data theft, because it corrupted the interface between Windows and the network card completely. After a couple hours of trying to repair and reload the drivers, I had to re-install Windows to fix the issue. Kinda counter-productive for something that requires web access to buy it.

[technical.angel]

Not particularly dangerous as far as data theft, because it corrupted the interface between Windows and the network card completely.

I've been getting a rash of those in the Helpdesk these past few weeks.

Nothing on the machine except an host::1 entry in the host file, but completely hosed as to pulling up web pages. Valid IP, messenger clients'll still work, but web pages just refuse to load. The network admin spent LITERALLY 7 hours working on the 3 that I still had in, and couldn't crack 'em.

[tropicsgoddess]

MalwareBytes seconded!! It's worked wonders! Try booting it into safe mode (F8) if you can, but you probably won't be able to.

That and Super AntiSpyware. Super AntiSpyware kills off the MS Antivirus 2009 infection. Good as a back up with Malwarebytes and HijackThis too.

[tamezin]

Mom called me today to help with the computer.

Normally she doesn't download weird things but today she got one of those popups that says "you have this virus! download this software!" and she downloaded it.

My daughter did this to me...on my machine...while I was at work.

She calls me crying, telling me she thinks she did a bad thing.

It was fun stuff.... BTW Norton didn't stop it, I had to uninstall norton, go out to AVG and clean it with AVG. I was not the happy egg that day.

[Kaylyn]

I've never been able to fully get rid of those types of viruses without formatting. I'll have to remember this thread if it happens again. Also, if it happens again, I'll be pulling my mother-in-law's wireless. It would make about the fourth time she's farked up her computer (and once got our phone bill crammed) because she insists on visiting adult dating/sex sites...

[sanchopanza65]

Oh lord, I hate that particular kind of software so much. I had both AntiSpyware Master and AntiVirus Master. Those are some of the nastiest worms you can get. I believe they both kill off windows.exe, and Antispyware master kept filling my desktop with icons for "Gay Bondage Porn". That was a bit hard to explain to my parents.. Had to get NOrton 360 to at least manage it, as I don't know if it's still there or not.