Well, I'm a victim of blindly trusting my friends. Damnit.

Regardless, it seems that the MSN virus I obtained is not quite the same as the one in the earlier thread...it has done a few particularly malicious things, like killing Norton Antivirus.

This, of course, upsets me a bit. I DID uninstall MSN Messenger to keep my friends a bit safer, but what do I do now? I would REALLY like to have Norton back, as I have a paid subscription to it for the next year...and it would very much frustrate me to have to pay said price again.

So, how do I get rid of it?

NOTE: When I say that it "killed" Norton Antivirus, I mean that NA will not open. The shortcuts do not work, and neither do the actual .exe files in the program files directory. My computer simply does nothing when I click on them.

Well if its possible to find the name of the virus, Norton may have an Executable file that will remove it from your system..
Other than that, I would ask T-D-C ;)

Well, I have decided to try out AVG Free for now...and then, depending upon the results, I'll get back to ya'll.

<font color=skyblue>And that was the last we ever heard of Lyle the Pirate, or Ilander. </font>

ARRRRGH! I shall rise again, be sure of that, ye scurvy dog!

Anyway, AVG found one infected .dll file...that MIGHT have been it, but again, I'm not sure. This may very well continue for a while.

lol

I've been using AVG Free Edition for around 6 months now and it works very well - fantastic for the price!!!

I use Openoffice as my office suite and Zonealarm free edition for my firewall. I also use Spybot S&D to ensure a Spyware-free system.

I have never had any problems with viruses, random shutdowns or malware of any sorts using this software.

Kudos to free software!!!

Oh... sorry, can't help you. Judging from the thread title I thought you were planning to commit suicide because you had the flu. My mistake...

Well, it's not uncommon for these things to search and try and prevent virus checkers from running.

Firstly, do you have a firewall installed? If not, then get one - I would recommend Kerio, but Zone Alarm is also supposed to be excellent. That will let you know if suspicious traffic is being sent and also monitor whether processes are doing suspicious things like starting other programmes without you asking.

Secondly, I would imagine its one of two things. Firstly, there might be a process running that continually kills NAV upon startup (ctrl+alt+del is the best way to find this out) or secondly they're quite fond of mucking around with your 'services' settings. It's been a long time since i've had Norton installed, but I have a feeling if you go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services you'll find some kind of related service there. It may have been changed to 'disable' in which case you would want to turn it back to automatic.

But your best bet is seeing what the virus AVG picked up was, looking it up and removing it. Otherwise any repairing you do may simply be undone upon the next restart.

Safe mode is your friend, as is Start->Run->msconfig under the 'startup' tag. Apart from stopping all the crap that usually runs upon Windows startup, often malicious programmes can be found there.

Also check your registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> SOFTWARE -> MICROSOFT -> WINDOWS -> RUN if that doesn't work.

Another likely hiding place is Docs & Settings -> Username -> Application Data (hidden folder) - you'll often find little nasties lurking there, and, because its hidden, many users are unaware of its existence.

HTH

[ 02-03-2005, 05:08 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

Thanks for that. It really cheered me up after a dreadful day at school. And the virus...erm...what shamrock said... :D

Delete and check for viruses in safe mode. That saves some trouble at times as well. To get there keep hitting F8 till you get a menu with options. It should be in there.