My uncle had the same thing happen on his PC from a facebook virus. If you know when i first happened and you're running XP then look and have system restore enabled just rstore to a point before the infection and then install one of the various recomended packages and do a scan. There's no need to pay anyone to sort it out.

If you don't have system restore enabled jsut download an antivirus package, boot windows in safe mode install the package and then run it. it should remove the virus.

theres one going round on facebook called Koobface. its like the one on msn messenger. it posts links to porn sites and such without you knowing about it and plays around with internet exsplorer opening loads of windows.

i had to do a total reboot to get rid. very anoying.

id say norton is by far the best security out there also its good to have spywear terminator.

also dont click any links that you have been sent on facebook even if there off trusted friends. ask them first and if thay dont know about it then dont click it.

Funnily enough, my desktop only started playing up after I clicked on one of those 'applications' on Facebook. Like most addictions, it's dangerous people.

The things you are talking about there is a new nasty currently called Scareware that tells you to download this super new antivirus programme for free to remove.

You install and run and it finds the virus's / trojans but you need to pay to remove.

You pay and the fake virus / trojan messages go away but you never had them in the first place.

It is another trojan scaring you into buying fake software to remove a fake trojan if that makes sense.

I had one that actually beat me this week abd I had to re-build the machine from scratch as it was too deep routed. Doesn't happen very often.

Mr F your project is all done and boxed ready for collection you will be pleased to know

Be very careful if you attempt this, any data on the thing will be wiped so you must have backed up your docs and photos etc before you try this.

The factory restore disks that come with main stream pc's do just that, restore the machine to its default settings that it left the factory with - it's data.

Mr F found that out when his daughter found the restore button on his. Ooops

yeah very true!

when i did system reboot i moved all my pics and what have you over onto my hard drive D. as all the windows dater and system files are on my c drive.

i didnt know about these false trojans i guess you just gotta be realy carefull. the koobface one i had was very nasty.

Any way of knowing for sure if it's gone from an uneducated perspective such as mine?

Hit it with a hammer. Works for me every time.

Yes I had one of those tonight, in a crumpled heap on the bench.

Will have to tell customer it fell down the stairs

Use Malwarebytes

I say that because I have used Spybot and all the other incarnations which do work to a point but one will find and remove somethings then you run another and it finds something that the previous one didn't find.

I once ran 3 programmes on the same computer and then after a reboot ran Malwarebytes and it still found some nasties.

Run malware first and the others found nowt when ran afterwards.

In my opinion if malware finds nothing on your system then you are safe.

Dont just run antivirus on your system either, you need a firewall as well.

Best bang for your buck is Kaspersky and it is the most user friendly to setup in terms of firewall permissions ETC.

I agree with Geordie.....Malwarebytes....download now!

Ta very much. Malwarebytes tis then.

Piggin hell, where did you spring up from.

Nice to see you about again.

Stick around, we have educated conversation on here now

Lol Geordie

I read everything on here but a lot of it is total hmmmm crap

forgive me for saying that!

However, when it comes to trojans and stuff....yeah I know a lot about that....but still need help from time to time

Stay off the dodgy porn sites and you shouldn't get any crap.

The PC Doctor cures another case of terminal PC death -

Cheers Big Man

my boss got that on his pC, google search got me the answers on how to clear it, trust Geordie though, as he said he is an expert

Some of the banks will give you free anti virus software on their online banking sites. Ive just got mcafee free via the HSBC site with no catches- I guess they dont want you infected and claiming against them for fraud.

thanks for all the info

hear is how it happened she says one day last week she was surfing the net and a something called pesronal procttion popped up on the screen saying a trojan was detected in the system. when i got home i turned onn the comp and it popped up again tehn it said to clear this trojan but a personal proctection package from them for $70 so i ignored that and got avg 8.5 from the web on a 30 day trail installed it. then run all the scans it used malware. it still says i have trojans on the computer the avg package has firewall which is all up and running

the laptop seems to be running fine interweb is working ok aswell but like i said i still get threat deteced and when i go to clear the threat it comes up saying it could crash my system

dont bother ...I'm with BT who have just switched to Mcafee from a perfectly good Norton AV.

My Pc is shockingly poor now ...I suspected it was crap from the start when it couldnt unistall Norton properly and install itself......and I'm not ringing Mumbai for "advice"...

anyway a couple of weeks ago I decided to try Malwarebytes and low and behold what was, according to Mcafee was a perfectly clean pc was infact infected with 21 nasties.....

Antivirus protection is free with BT but I'm considering uninstalling Mcafee and switching to AVG which I got for a few realtives and they havent had any problems....

telling you, kaspersky, its the best, and it doesn't slow the crap out of your pc when its booting up,or at all, just sits in the background doing the business, looking a nice shade of green.

Eset Nod32 is the best there is, although Kaspersky is excellent aswell, and a good price.

You have to be careful with Nod 32, it does the business but it was initially built for the coporate market and has lots of functions that are useless to the home user.

The main one is the ability for an Ativirus server to constantly update itself and then push the updates on all of the desktop clients.

Because of all this functionality it is much more bloated thean say AVG or Kapersky.

Meant to post this last week but forgot.
When you reformat your computer with the recovery disk, or most other apps they'll only delete the sort of index so the computer can't assemble the data and not fill the harddrive with 0s. So the data is still there, just the computer doesn't "see" it - which is also why police can still recover files if someone was to do a basic reformat.

There are apps out to attempt to recover the data, I won't post the link but 'Hiren' provides a number of different applications which might help you.

Be a good idea to use Norton Ghost to take an image of your system when you get it how you like it.

McAfee is a good AV software product. The reason why you have had dramas is because of Norton AV.

Norton inbeds itself right into your registery, and some of the changes made can only be manually reconfigured. An it is not a good idea to mess with registery settings unless you know exactly what you are doing.

I have had my Dell XPS with McAfee now for around 2 years. I have had now problems at all. AV software is something you need to keep on top of along with your Firewall settings. McAfee updates every time i go on the net and has never let me down yet.

Norton AV is possibly the worst AV product about IMO