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My computer has caught a virus. Or a trojan. Or malware. Or all three.
It happened yesterday. At first I started experiencing problems with windows explorer crashing on me as I was doing some things. I rebooted the machine and it wouldn't let me log in properly. After some fiddling and a panicked call to a couple of friends more technically adept than I and I got back in. That's when I started getting invasive pop up windows. Crap.
I did the usual steps to try and get rid of it, so it didn't help. I got ahold of another tech friend and he walked me through doing some more serious cleaning steps. Nope, didn't get it all. I even deleted things from the registry, which is scary. No luck.
This same friend came over today before our work party. He discovered that while he could clear out most of the pieces, there was a .dll that had attached itself to something that MUST be running while the machine is booted up, so it can't be deleted because it's in use. He's doing some research to see if he can find a way to remove that file. If we can remove that file, it should clear up the problem.
Until then, I get to deal with an infected machine. I'll clean it off every day, but that's still going to make simple tasks like surfing the web annoying. Hopefully it doesn't grab anything even more nefarious while we're working on what to do about it. I don't want to do a wipe of the computer because I've got files on it that aren't backed up. All my sims stuff is backed up, but I've got characters and artwork and other stuff on there I would be sad to lose.
As near as I can figure, the trojan either came from one of the Store Stuff downloads on MATY or from TSR (The Sims Resource). I was looking at TSR when I got a couple of warnings from my anti-virus program. After that is when I started having problems, so I'm leaning towards blaming TSR. GRR. Another reason to hate the site.
The most irritating thing about this whole mess is that it killed the time I'd allotted to work on the next Pseudo update. I'd intended to shoot some scenes and some filler I know I need, but by the time I could get into the game and do anything, it was too late. Guh.
If I have to wipe the computer, it's what I'll have to do. I'm sure I can save what I need to, it'll just be a pain in the ass. Irritating, but not life ending.
So, tell me something good to make me smile. :)
It happened yesterday. At first I started experiencing problems with windows explorer crashing on me as I was doing some things. I rebooted the machine and it wouldn't let me log in properly. After some fiddling and a panicked call to a couple of friends more technically adept than I and I got back in. That's when I started getting invasive pop up windows. Crap.
I did the usual steps to try and get rid of it, so it didn't help. I got ahold of another tech friend and he walked me through doing some more serious cleaning steps. Nope, didn't get it all. I even deleted things from the registry, which is scary. No luck.
This same friend came over today before our work party. He discovered that while he could clear out most of the pieces, there was a .dll that had attached itself to something that MUST be running while the machine is booted up, so it can't be deleted because it's in use. He's doing some research to see if he can find a way to remove that file. If we can remove that file, it should clear up the problem.
Until then, I get to deal with an infected machine. I'll clean it off every day, but that's still going to make simple tasks like surfing the web annoying. Hopefully it doesn't grab anything even more nefarious while we're working on what to do about it. I don't want to do a wipe of the computer because I've got files on it that aren't backed up. All my sims stuff is backed up, but I've got characters and artwork and other stuff on there I would be sad to lose.
As near as I can figure, the trojan either came from one of the Store Stuff downloads on MATY or from TSR (The Sims Resource). I was looking at TSR when I got a couple of warnings from my anti-virus program. After that is when I started having problems, so I'm leaning towards blaming TSR. GRR. Another reason to hate the site.
The most irritating thing about this whole mess is that it killed the time I'd allotted to work on the next Pseudo update. I'd intended to shoot some scenes and some filler I know I need, but by the time I could get into the game and do anything, it was too late. Guh.
If I have to wipe the computer, it's what I'll have to do. I'm sure I can save what I need to, it'll just be a pain in the ass. Irritating, but not life ending.
So, tell me something good to make me smile. :)