Norton AV - worse than a virus
Discussion
Tonight Norton anti-virus helpfully informed me that my PC was infected with a trojan. It also, somewhat less helpfully, told me there was sod all it could do - over and over again in an infinite loop of doom. Cue reboot and dead PC. 
This leads me to conclude that AV programs can be worse than the stuff they are supposed to protect you from. If it had simply delivered the message I could have manually sorted the problem instead. Also, why on earth does Win XP give you a blue screen o'death for approximatey one nanosecond before restarting? Not much bloody use... I know you can change some setting in Windows so it stops on the BSOD - but only when windows is actually running!
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Thank god I still have my PDA and WiFi to post on PH!
This leads me to conclude that AV programs can be worse than the stuff they are supposed to protect you from. If it had simply delivered the message I could have manually sorted the problem instead. Also, why on earth does Win XP give you a blue screen o'death for approximatey one nanosecond before restarting? Not much bloody use... I know you can change some setting in Windows so it stops on the BSOD - but only when windows is actually running!
[/rant]
Thank god I still have my PDA and WiFi to post on PH!
Seconded!It wasn't req.dll, was it? I was hit by that last week. Again, with the same thing - big red warning box, but nothing that can be done. Hooks into winlogon so always running, it seems.
Anyway, dig out your old installation CD, boot of that into "system recovery" mode (I think that's what's it called) -- keep hitting F8 until you get the text menus and select it. Then delete the file using good old dos commands.
Still going strong a week later and no more warnings - yay!
* This is all layman's speak - I'm sure an IT bod can confirm / deny.
>> Edited by dxg999 on Friday 29th April 01:26
Anyway, dig out your old installation CD, boot of that into "system recovery" mode (I think that's what's it called) -- keep hitting F8 until you get the text menus and select it. Then delete the file using good old dos commands.
Still going strong a week later and no more warnings - yay!
* This is all layman's speak - I'm sure an IT bod can confirm / deny.
>> Edited by dxg999 on Friday 29th April 01:26
No - though I had that problem on my work PC a couple of weeks ago. It was another DLL and I stupidly forgot to make a note of the name before I rebooted (I was tired 
).
The plan is to buy another hard drive today and install windows on it, slave the old drive to it and pull of all my data before wiping it.
Anyone know of a backup solution that can archive 160Gb of data without a) taking forever (ie, multiple DVDs) or b) cost the GDP of a small country to buy?
). The plan is to buy another hard drive today and install windows on it, slave the old drive to it and pull of all my data before wiping it.
Anyone know of a backup solution that can archive 160Gb of data without a) taking forever (ie, multiple DVDs) or b) cost the GDP of a small country to buy?
dxg999 said:
Anyway, dig out your old installation CD, boot of that into "system recovery" mode (I think that's what's it called) -- keep hitting F8 until you get the text menus and select it. Then delete the file using good old dos commands.
I got over-enthusiastic manually deleting some spyware and accidentally deleted something important - cue black screen. Arse!
The solution in my case was to re-install XP fro the original disk using 'recovery' mode. It took a while but was automatic and amazing, nay miraculous - I watched as it found loads of damaged files, threw them out, replaced them with shiny new ones and after about an hour and a few reboots all was well again. Amazing.
Have you tried to boot your PC in safe mode (F8 on start-up). If not I would try that first and then run Norton. Does Norton give you the name of the Virus?, if it does post it here and we may be able to point you in the direct of a removal tool if there is one for your particular virus. Sometimes you have to remove the specific virus with a removal tool as the AV product can't always do it.
Tried safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, last known good config, boot from WinXP CD and use recovery console. No luck with any - especially not having the DLL name 
Thinking about it, the crash may be unrelated to the trojan itself. When booting in safe mode the last driver listed before it blue screens looks to be the AGP driver.
I've had similar happen before where the AGP and graphics drivers get so terminally screwed that it's impossible to recover.
Thinking about it, the crash may be unrelated to the trojan itself. When booting in safe mode the last driver listed before it blue screens looks to be the AGP driver.
I've had similar happen before where the AGP and graphics drivers get so terminally screwed that it's impossible to recover.judas said:
Tried safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, last known good config, boot from WinXP CD and use recovery console. No luck with any - especially not having the DLL name
Thinking about it, the crash may be unrelated to the trojan itself. When booting in safe mode the last driver listed before it blue screens looks to be the AGP driver.
Its sounds like a rebuild would probably be best. You may be able to recover windows but it usually isn't worth the time and hair pulling out to get it running again.
You could retrive the data using a bootable linux CD which if you dont know is basically you put the CD in and the operating system on the CD runs like its installed on your HD.
Knoppix is a good one and then you could format your HD and start again.
Or.. you could buy a second HD like suggested by Gregg and install XP onto the new HD then import the old HD. Ebuyer comes highly recommended.
__Lee__ said:
Its sounds like a rebuild would probably be best. You may be able to recover windows but it usually isn't worth the time and hair pulling out to get it running again.
Even if recovery worked it would only be a temporary measure to enable me to copy off my data before a full wipe and reinstall.
__Lee__ said:
[url]
You could retrive the data using a bootable linux CD which if you dont know is basically you put the CD in and the operating system on the CD runs like its installed on your HD.
[url]Knoppix|www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html|www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html[/url][/url] is a good one and then you could format your HD and start again.
Hmmm, not considered the bootable Linux CD route - and I have one at home too.
__Lee__ said:
Or.. you could buy a second HD like suggested by Gregg and install XP onto the new HD then import the old HD. Ebuyer comes highly recommended.
If I had the time I'd order one from eBuyer, but I need to get it back up and running this weekend - so I went out at lunchtime and bought a 200Gb drive
>> Edited by judas on Friday 29th April 14:29
If you don't have too much data, you could boot the linux cd and burn the data to a cd/dvd or connected drive and then format the disk and start from scratch or the other option is to remove the old HD install the new HD and set-up XP then try and import the duff disk and grab all of the data off it.
FourWheelDrift said:Good luck, from my experience it refuses to be uninstalled. Leave bits behind? The registry will be full of 'em. Its a bl**dy nightmare.
My Norton AV subscription runs out on Saturday, it's going to be fully uninstalled (and checked to make sure it hasn't left any bits behind) and it will be replaced by Avast.
I bought the small business edition, and installed on a server with virus file distribution to all my PC's. Inevitably I forgot the password, and I had configured the PC's so they could only be modified from the server. I suppose its fair that antivirus software should be difficult to remove, you wouldn't want a virus to sneak through and kill your antivirus easily, but this product tries so hard not to be killed you start believing its sentient!
victormeldrew said:
My Norton AV subscription runs out on Saturday, it's going to be fully uninstalled (and checked to make sure it hasn't left any bits behind) and it will be replaced by Avast.
Good luck, from my experience it refuses to be uninstalled. Leave bits behind? The registry will be full of 'em. Its a bl**dy nightmare.
I've found the most efficient way to get most of it out is to try an upgrade which firstly asks you to remove the previous version before installing, then do a reboot. Then clean the rest away manually.
I've also been looking at AntiVir and AVG along with Avast. Now deciding which one to go for.
Bodo.....I've set up XP to do an automatic reinstall and recovery every Monday at 3am as it is
All done here, Norton eradicated and Avast installed. Did a thorough scan (5.5hrs!!!!!) It found 4 trojans although these were on attachments on trashed emails that I hadn't deleted from Thunderbird (they were the old Citibank click link and enter details spam mails) they were deleted immediately on receipt and never activated. Norton didn't pick them up though so my first impressions of Avast are good.
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