Preserved Topic: Need Help: Virus

I don't know where else I could ask for help.

My PC is infected by unknown virus, Norton and PC Ciling can't clean it. As a result, I can't open gif, jpeg, doc, xls, and zip files. Those files seem like unknown files (with the microsoft flag icon). I don't know what to do.. when I click, for example, rock.gif, it turn out to be rock.gif.exe., DOS Format.

What can I do?

Of course this is a last resort but you could always reformat. If you have a CD burner, which I am praying you do, you could back-up all your files. It's happened to me a few times, and I just get pissed off. Oh well you know what they say: Shit happens.

Reformat would be the last thing I want to do. Can anyone suggest a powerful anti-virus software, other than PC Cilin an Norton?

Thanks, Raven..

McAfee ViruScan. www.mcafee.com

I suggest you use www.avx.com

have you bothered to try and reassociate them?

AVP

Command software also has some kick ass Virus removing software... Command Anti Virus was the only program that managed to stand up to the MarBug virus I had a couple of weeks back. God dam stupid PC User Mag.. It was on their CD!!! All I want to now is why that CD didn't get checked before it was sent out! That's one magazine subcription I flet justified to cancle!

As I know next to nothing about virii, ignore me if it makes sense to.

Have you tried renaming the affected files, like renaming rock.gif.exe. back to rock.gif? Just curious to see if that would have any effect. Perhaps the virus merely changed the filenames so that, as far as your computer is concerned, you have no gif, jpeg, etc. files? It might get you some functionality back until you get rid of the virus.

Like I said, feel free to ignore me. The things I don't know could fill the Asylum several times over.

Wangenstein

There are a lot of strange people in the world... I should know; I'm three of them...

the only virus i had so far was the trojan that i think all it does is spread itself. it couldn't start because i have Me so it wasn't able to start before boot up.

all you might have to do is re-associate file types. you need to (maybe you have to hold shift) and right click. choose open with. Make sure always open with is checked, pick the program and click ok. From now on until you or the virus changes the association the file will open with that program. Some programs will do it for you. When you open it'll ask if you want certain extensions to automatically open with it.

Also check to see if you have TweakUI in your control panel. There should be an option in that to refresh file associations. If, in the worst case, your registry is corrupted, the only recourse is to scan the registry and hope you have an uncorrupted backup.

I made a sig last night, name it asylum.gif, and uploaded it this morning. When I view it on the web, the gif is ok, but, in my PC, when I clicked it, it become asylum.gif.exe and the icon changed to the ugly DOS EXE icon. I shift+right click+open with and opened it with notepad. You know what I get ?? This is just the last line of the whole ugly code with some unknown characters...

---------------


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KERNEL32.DLL advapi32.dll oleaut32.dll shell32.dll user32.dll wsock32.dll LoadLibraryA GetProcAddress ExitProcess RegCloseKey VariantClear ShellExecuteA LoadStringA send
--------------

What does it mean?

I hate this... I cannot open all my images...

Rick, try opening the file within your grafix program, or when you 'open with' select you grafix program.


I am not a compiled code reader but most .exe files will have associations of dll since I believe windows handles dll's and dos handles exe. But you will get some wierd funky monkey code whnever you open a gif jpg or whatever in notepad

_______

"Just a lonely soul, searching for a single truth...."

Rick, the weird thing in your story is that your .gif file got renamed to .gif.exe and that's not all!
it also got executable code!

If it was still .gif and have the .exe content i would say run ScanDisk and check for errors,
but as it is renamed to .gif.exe then there must be something wrong yes maybe a virus...

e.

lallous, I've tried everything I could with Norton and PC Cilin. No virus found. I try to rename, but still the file do not change.

F8L, I tried the "open with", and tried to open the .gif file with IE and PS, but same thing happens, it change to .gif.exe file and cannot be opened. I do not know what's wrong, everything seems to be not working.

Silence, what's TweakUI, I don't have it in my system. Any other suggestion?

Should I reformat? I've uploaded all the "important files" to NBCI, but I'm affraid some drivers will be removed.

Anyway, thanks for your help, guys. I really appreciate it..

ONe more thing here...
if you use win 9.x there is an option that allows you to see the file type. If it is turned off a pirate.gif would look like this: pirate
hope you didn;t renam it to pirate.gif because now it really would be
pirate.gif.gif
(or if it was changed to exe earlier: pirate.gif.exe)
If this doesn't make sense ignore it
if it does than try to change the view setting in the "Folder Options"

i opened a gif in notepad, and here is the last line i had of a gif
?°fvÔ?PnsÍ'F&T?C?2]B�rj
F°þ£çAB$??½R(+L.å¸Íe®1?IÕ?:ö�?2¨C?'¦¥Uvª?Ì²'ôI¢Y?E0"­qDk!)3«R?�I;gJSLÍÔ²??äÑ?)
?%?àÔ¦ÑÈ?¾7¬�`ÉJ\ªR?ÊÔ¦:J5È¥z�ö=Õ VmHÚ2Õ«d«õJÈÙ´æU??°¬P?_AʸV«¡Õ ?cÈB2Ô·ªæ û£Ò?º¸Çät?4?.õ*Ð?°îM]]HïBÄ? Ö ?õ& ²É®Ü.0ñç@*û»¸¡Jí\êFU² &DvLH?æú¦?:$´¥2þI¨ÂÖ7}V �]¥®òK? ö²
Ó¬ÂÚVÆÖ @$ÈtØæõ?aºm±J²??4È!£�Q Ò¥Ù¦ò ;5ÈN?ÊÍ?ôpu?Ȳ¢TÝ(yL®­�}²\&$? Ö3?�?®7Cú9­IÜxò6Dºh9+i
Éÿ$a!°@Â;�ß2
uAáC?Î?4x?ÙaA²pý?Ê ?Íî?¢b?$÷ nÈuWU¤ö??ÆNÈ(?dÇ?Äm�ªú¥Ü©=_²gCZ¦R?,Ö�![#B¸eóRÈ?eA¢úBdÆ?#I,\�Ç)²;aÞÇAfÀ??k·I£+Çv?¡¥¸F?á@^,C2× Î]?>1[?½(äô?*E³?È?

Actually, JakeB, that code was appended to the file when it got the .exe extension because they are required libraries for executing a program.

there must be more to it than that. i changed the extension to exe and it doesn't add any thing to it. i opened an executable i made and it does have some things, but none of the ones he posted.

Those are not all required to run an executable, i know wsock - is winsock, shell - shells programs with the associated program and the other ones are not necessary either.

JakeB, that's weird.

Well, I guess it have come to the worst : I cannot open those utilities on Control Panel.

Ok, guys. I really need another help. I want to reformat my system. How do I do this?

Just another suggestion before you go ahead and format your Hard Disk. Try re-installing Windows form the CD. Just pop in the CD, browse it then run the Setup.exe. This won't hurn anything on you PC. All of you programs/drivers/system settings and stuff will remain un-changed once this if finished. All this does in restore your core system files. I'm not saying it will work, but it can't hurt and it may save you the trouble of having to back up everything then format & install everything again.

If this doesn't work, then you'll most probably have to format-reinstall. BUT, this still might not fix your problem if you do actualy have a virus! unless you dump and destroy all of the effected files just to be sure. Which will suck, cause I'm sure you've got heaps of cool stuff you've done that you want to keep. So before you format, try every virus scanner you can get you hands on just to make sure you don't have a virus. Also make sure the virus scanners your using are checking all of the different types of files, and that they are the latest version. Don't use outdated virus scanners from old PC magazine CD's as there isn't really any point, most viruses that actualy cause harm have never been encountered before, so always get the latest update patch from the net.

Hope you get things sorted soon.

Dracusis

Thanks, Dracusis. I think I'll try your suggestion. Yeah, I have a lot of cool stuff in my system and it really suck a big time to just lose those stuff. But, at least I've already learn a lot and my brain is not affected by any virus, I can redo all the stuff again (at least some of them). I've uploaded some of them to tripod. I hope those people at tripod do not realize this. . Thanks again, guys.

I wouldn't be too woried about the whole virus thing as It doesn't really sound much like a virus. And even if it was, it's unlikely from what I've seen you post that the virus itself would reside in all of you .gif & .jpg files. Chances are the virus resides in one of the system files, which is why I suggested U re-install windows. But IMO I dobut you actualy have a virus, you system just doing really weird things. But you never really can tell with viruses, after all, there designed to be evasive.

Dracusis