Wildfire Riders

My computer recently contracted a particularly nasty virus. Over the course of me trying to get it off my computer (two days) it got progressively worse and worse.

It started with a bunch of spyware that my antivirus program was seemingly unable to remove. It got worse from there, spamming anti-spyware popups on my computer frequently, eventually replacing my desktop background with a red blank background. I tried Ctrl+Alt+Delete to find the malicious processes. Task Manager blocked. I tried System Restore. System Restore blocked. I tried booting in Safe Mode. Safe Mode blocked. I tried using last known good settings in the initial bootup screen. Didn't work.

Frustrated and tired, I went to sleep for the night. Woke up yesterday and now I'm getting automatically logged off Windows whenever I try to log on.

The virus is apparently called worm.win32.netsky . It's apparently been around for a while. But of course other people say the message you get regarding it on Windows is fake and part of the virus, meaning it could be something else entirely.

So I'm pretty much at a loss, and am looking at a possible full system reformat unless some of you folks can provide me with some advice.

Gharr says this might be helpful for you:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/9505/how ... s-malware/

Good luck!

Unfortunately I can't get into Windows to do any of those steps, though they do look helpful. This does look very similar though, I'm wondering if this is either a more advanced version of that or that I was hit with that and another virus around the same time.

Nuke it from orbit: it's the only way to be sure. A little adware is one thing, but my experience has been that a massively compromised system (like you describe) is way easier to reformat and reinstall than clean.

This is presuming, of course, that you have any data you care about backed up already. If you don't, your best bet is probably yanking the hard drive and connecting it to a machine with a totally different operating system (macs have this and most distributions of linux that aren't redhat can read your Windows drive by default) then collecting your precious files from the safety of an invulnerable position. Similar, and possibly easier (if you're down with my man Tux) would be to boot your own machine with a linux livecd.

I'm probably going to go for the full reformat, I'm just making sure with various people that copies of some important files I'd rather not lose exist on their machines still.

I haven't got much by way of solid advice, but lemme extend my sympathies here. I only recently just got my good computer working again (though the problem itself wasn't a virus, though a virus is what brought on the problem in the first place); hopefully the recovery here is relatively painless.

Oh yes; and as mentioned, all of the Shaila art has been saved. >_> Since what happened to me, I've taken to copying any sort of documents/pictures I intend to keep to a secondary hard drive regularly.