A boot virus?

[silver 2039]

My compute guy says that I have a boot virus and I need to reformat my entire bloody laptop apparently. I don't necessarily believe him.

The problem started after I downloaded something from limewire, I've deleted what I downloaded, but its some sort of spyware I think because when I first open mozilla or internet explorer I get 2 or 3 pop ups from the same sites PerfSpot and Dcards, I've blocked them, I've run AVG virus check, I've run AVG anti spyware, and Norton anti-virus and nothing has bloody worked.

AVG anti spyware says that it detects two traces and it tells me their location, does that mean I have to go an manually delete them because its not doing it for me.

So is this a boot virus and is reformatting nessecary? Isn't there some way to remove their either manually or through a program? Reformatting would be quite irritating.

 

[Chieftess]

Sometimes the only way is to format. Next time, don't use Limewire.

 

[Rheinmetall]

Have you tried other spyware removal tools?

 

[silver 2039]

Sometimes the only way is to format.

Gah!!!

Next time, don't use Limewire.

Is Bit torrent better then? Cuz I have that too but just haven't used it as much.

Have you tried other spyware removal tools?

No just AVG and Norton, is there any in particular which would be well suited for this?

 

[taper]

A basic reformat isn't guaranteed to clean out the boot sector, if that is your problem. Do a web search for free programs that write zeros to the hard drive. And yes, limewire is bad, bittorrent is safer, but it all depends on what you're downloading.

 

[Shadylookin]

Gah!!!

reformating is as easy as breathing, just use the cd it came with or the boot sector specifically for it

Is Bit torrent better then? Cuz I have that too but just haven't used it as much.

it matters not where you download spyware from it's still going to be spyware. Running executables you got from any p2p applications is like having unprotected sex in sub-sahara africa, you're basically just asking for a virus.

No just AVG and Norton, is there any in particular which would be well suited for this?

assuming you have a legit copy of windows you can probably see if windows defender can fix it. The fastest way is probably just to reformat

 

[GenMarshall]

Sometimes the only way is to format. Next time, don't use Limewire.

Or use VMware to virtualize an Windows OS and run Limewire in that guest OS. Anything that happens, stays in that disk image file. Thats what I do.

 

[MarineCorps]

A basic reformat isn't guaranteed to clean out the boot sector, if that is your problem. Do a web search for free programs that write zeros to the hard drive. And yes, limewire is bad, bittorrent is safer, but it all depends on what you're downloading.

A zero fill isn't something do on a whim. I started to do it once for class on a 2GB drive but it was going to take four hours at east. Reformat first then begin to think about doing a zero fill.

 

[mourndraken]

well if you steal stuff off the net then you are dealing with files that could've been tampered with. There are some brilliant hackers who love to cause destruction. There really is no way of telling who cracked the program that you used. A few years ago, I used to do what you do, then I found that my computer and bandwidth was being used to host part of a warez website. Now I keep my nose clean. If you play with matches, then one day you will get burned.

 

[BadKharma]

If you purchase decent ant-virus software like nod-32 you can scan the boot sector and remove viruses from there.

 

[warmwaffles]

have you also tried rebooting your PC into XP's repair console and typing FIXMBR?

Also I wasn't aware of anti-virus software that can scan the boot sector. Please don't point out norton because it sucks period

 

[Rheinmetall]

Well if it's not certain it's a boot sector virus, you could try Spybot S&D and Hijackthis.