New Virus?

[Warlord Sam]

I've gotten two emails with a random subject such as "hey" or "site", with no text and no attachments. Has anyone heard of a new virus like this? Should I be concerned at having gotten to the point where I could see there was no text? Could my system be infected, even though I didn't open an attachment?

I have Norton AntiVirus, and ran it. All files came up clean...

Thanks

 

[CornMaster]

This Norton = I'm protected and can't get a virus attitude HAS to stop.

And not just you...the whole world!


So I'll start here.

Norton can only protect against Virui it knows about. So if you haven't updated in 4 months...it can catch 4 month or newer virui. This goes for all Virus programs. However the best Anti-Virus program is common sense. You know what not to download etc....however, if you suspect a Virus then go to http://housecall.antivirus.com This site can do a full scan of your computer, for free, with updated definitions. Why do I like them so much? Because they have been around a long time, and make anti-virus programs for BIOS chips.

Anyway....check that out. And see what it tells you.

 

[Warlord Sam]

heh yeah that probly did look like "I'm clean because I have norton" but really it was meant to be a question, just telling you Norton didn't find one. Thanks I'll check out that link next time I've got a little spare time. As it is, my beautiful grrlfriend doesn't want me spending my time with her doing dorky computer stuff : /

 

[Warlord Sam]

Okay, so I took the time to do a full virus scan at that link (which I bookmarked, thanks for the link) It comes up saying I have three infected files, all are cabinet files under C:\_RESTORE\ARCHIVE, does this sound like I have a serious problem or no?

I tried deleting them, then I tried quaranteening them... neither would work due to the file-source access denied, which windows suggested was because of the files being used.

Thank'ee.

UPDATE: I've gotten two more emails, so I'm definately thinking its a new virus. Maybe the first ones were from a test, because the newest wave of emails shares the same random topic from people I don't know, and the same blank screen (subject but no text to the email), but has one difference: These new ones have huge attachments!

Beware, a virus is about...

 

[CornMaster]

Those files are used by Windows to do System Restores in WinME and WinXP.

You can delete them from DOS but the easiest way to do it is to just disable System Restore for a while. It will delete these files. Then scan and make sure they are gone. Then reenable System Restore.

Of course...this erases all your restore points...so there is no going back. But it would solve the problem.

 

[Warlord Sam]

I'm much too lazy to go into dos, so I just disabled system restore. Maybe a dumb move, considering I know I have a virus, but oh well. Hopefully it all works out, yeah? Heh heh, in the meantime, that new virus is seriously out there and has infected the computer of Everlore.com's editor. Scary stuff... thanks for helping me get rid of the buggar, Corn Master.

UPDATE: I just finished scanning, and its clean : )

 

[CornMaster]

Make sure you rescan the system.

 

[damunzy]

If those files were protected by windows how did they get infected?