Virus?! Al-Quieda??? Help!!!!!!

[ohreli1]

I turned on my computer today and distressing things are happening! Windows 98 starts loading--splash screen, blue desktop, then there is a flash of my icons/toolbars appearing for a milli-second, then disappearing. Then, everything stops. When I push ctrl-alt-delete, there are absolutely no programs running. Zilch. Just an empty blue desktop.
Hmmm..... virus??? Now what??!!

[ohreli1]

incidentally, I forgot to mention: I tried scandisking with a Windows Emergency Startup Disk, and it found no errors. I had a McAffee Safe and Sound Emergency Disk, and it turned out to be useless---wouldnt boot at all. I also tried starting in Safe Mode, and it behaved exactly the same way!---ended up with blank screen, no programs, no where to go.

[fink]

Welcome to Virtual dr...


Try booting into a DOS (command) prompt (usually by pressing F8 when prompted) and restoring the registry from a day before the problem started.

type

scanreg /restore [enter]

and pick the appropriate date of the five you should be offered.

[Ridgerunr]

And,,if/when you get back up n' running,i'd suggest you throw that McAfee crap as far out the window as possible and get Zone Alarm and a good AV program such as eTrust.

https://www2.my-etrust.com/services/ipe_support

[Buffalo]

ohreli1,
If no happiness, reply back for more suggestions.



Now, now RidgeRunner,
I have factual reports (somewhere) that McAfee works OK on some peoples' systems. The number is over 2.

PS: In some Anti-virus tests, though, McAfee actually outperforms Norton and eTrust.

(course, if your PC won't boot into Windo....... ?)

[fink]

Just to interject off-topicidly (!? ) I think Mcafee does do a good job of detecting viruses it just doesn't work well. Sounds contradictory I know but what I mean is that it does find/stop/eliminate viruses most of the time but causes lots of other problems with computers. Something really bad happened to the product's usability after version 3. It was around the time of ver 4 and up that things in the a/v world started changing... email worms, scripts, trojans, etc became much more common very quickly and all a/v companies were suddenly forced to radically change the way their programs detected and eliminated viruses. Some adapted better than others. Many became very bloated and distributed themselves throughout the OS in a cumbersome fashion, like Mcafee, and others, in varying degrees took less of a sledgehammer approach and came up with less obtrusive and more stable versions.. like Norton & AVP to name two of a number that do a good job in all respects.

[ohreli1]

thanks for all the responses!

I wont be able to try anything until later tonight, so check back tomorrow to find out if I was successful

[Buffalo]

10-4
Enjoy your weekend.

[nlday]

ohreli1...mcaffee will send you detailed instructions on how to delete
it out of the registry, just need to beg a bit. follow them exactly,and back up your registry.
and be done with it.
maybe someone here has the directions in a file they can send to you.

[RoyAlan]

Well you could use AVG that is very good and it is
FREE too, just my twp penny worth. Regards Roy.