[alphaleonis]

Hey, everyone! Not sure if I am posting this in the right space. I am not new to using a computer, but I am rather new at troubleshooting things to get rid of malware on computers (my brother was the tech guy in the family, and he is no longer able to help because he's had major surgery). A few days ago, a weird pop up randomly came up while I was browsing the net. It didn't look like an advertisement popup, but it was transparent and went away too quickly for me to figure out what it was - then my computer shut down by itself and wouldn't start back up. This pop up, I think, was a virus of some sort. After going into Safe Mode, what looked like Microsoft Security Essentials told me I had 37 different viruses on my computer and the only option to delete them was to pay at least $50, which I automatically was suspicious of and so I just downloaded AVG instead. After messing around with AVG and it not working (I would try to get it to scan and it "scanned 0 files successfully"), I downloaded Avast and Malware Bytes and those got rid of the weird fake antivirus, and with System Restore I got my computer back to itself again...for the most part.

Fast forward to today, where I've gotten fed up from Avast "detecting" more than fifty different viruses a day (and more repeats), I've tried doing the scan before the computer reboots and it hasn't caught whatever it is that has been multiplying all this time. Oddly enough, Avast still is one of my programs, but Malware Bytes was gone. I downloaded it again, ran it, it caught one virus and I deleted it, then it asked me to restart my computer to make sure I had gotten everything...so the computer restarted as normal, and then Malware Bytes was gone again, and the virus is still multiplying!

I am not sure what is going on and what I should do, as I'm still very new to dealing with any sorts of computer problems on my own.

If I posted in the wrong place, please let me know where I should move this post. Thank you very much!

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[LiveBrianD]

MSE is free - there is no paid version of it. You definitely have a fake version of it on your machine. Are there any odd processes running?

To be honest, I would simply reinstall Windows on the machine. I typically don't trust a machine that's been infected to ever be clean again otherwise.

[alphaleonis]

LiveBrianD, on 25 July 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

MSE is free - there is no paid version of it. You definitely have a fake version of it on your machine. Are there any odd processes running?

To be honest, I would simply reinstall Windows on the machine. I typically don't trust a machine that's been infected to ever be clean again otherwise.

I'm trying to remember if the laptop came with a Windows CD or not; many years ago, my Toshiba came with an install disk, but I just bought this Lenovo back in October and it came with Windows already installed on it.

I'm very surprised that there is nothing "strong enough" to get rid of this thing. I've noticed that five different viruses attempt to do whatever every four minutes, which has me very nervous. I work a part-time job to support myself at the moment, so money is an issue for me. I can't go buy another version of Windows, nor pay someone what my brother charges, which is $50 to fix it. The fact that my computer caught a virus and that current scans no longer find anything, yet still contain whatever is attacking my computer, makes me wonder what the use of reinstalling Windows will be if something like that can happen again...

Are you very certain there is absolutely nothing else I can do besides saving up to buy another copy of Windows 7?

[Flashorn]

Hey alphaleonis !

Welcome to PCWorld Community.

Usually, all notebooks come with a separate partition on the hard drive to restore the notebook to Factory Specs.
You would then, burn your own recovery DVDs to Restore your notebook to Factory Specs. Have you done this??

Yours is probably the same but, am not sure how to access it.

This info is most likely in the booklets you received at purchase time. It will be a Key that you
have to press on startup. Something like a F5 or F11 Key. You also have to understand that, you will lose ALL data on
the hard drive unless you "backup" that data. IF you would rather re-install to Factory Specs then yes, this should solve
the infection problem.

This YouTube will demonstrate how to recover to Fcatory Fresh settings (when you opened the notebook for the first time)



So, we could help in recovering your notebook to Factory Fresh install or if you would rather try the stronger virus removal
applications , that is up to you.

Please let us know what you decide on.


FLASHORN.

This post has been edited by Flashorn: 25 July 2012 - 11:06 PM

[LiveBrianD]

You can download an ISO image to windows 7 here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/

Burn that to a DVD or use the win7 download tool to get it on a thumb drive, and install from that. After that, install drivers from the manufacturer's website, and you're good to go.

This might be a better option than the recovery partition, which might have gotten infected.

[Flashorn]

It's unlikely but, not impossible.

It would have to be an attack on the MBR which are very rare and the consequences would be different
than what is experienced here.

As for the recovery partition, it is also possible but again, since the recovery partition cannot be written too
it's also a rare occurrence.

I would start with stronger measure and move to the recovery partition once all other options available fail



FLASHORN.