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From: Jeff Strickland on 12 May 2010 12:23
My machiune is running under a variety, maybe multitude, of viruses. I have
managed to remove no less than 5 virii, a couple of malwares, and some
spyware. Still no worky ...

System Restore. I hate when that happens.

The Hosts file had a single entry for the Local Host, so that wasn't the
problem.

After System Restore, I'm now loading the updates. So far there were 73 on
the first round, a few random updates, SP3, and now 36 more. That's alot of
updates.



"Jeff Strickland" <crwlrjeff(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:hs9dcf$ajq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>I have a machine on the bench that can go online to any address I can dream
>up, except it will not go to Microsoft.com. It won't go to any of the MSoft
>sites. I'm trying to get the latest updates (XP SP3) using a high speed
>connection, the machine normally uses dial-up.
>
> It's not an Internet issue because I can go to Yahoo!, MSN, Google, Adobe
> (where I downloaded Reader 9) and lots of other places. The only place the
> machine will not let me go is MSoft. It does not care if I'm using IE or
> FireFox, or Chrome, or any other browser. I was getting a screen that
> indicated the machine was attempting a Dial-up, but now that I've removed
> the dial-up service, all I'm getting is an error, PAGE CANNOT BE
> DISPLAYED, with a series of things to check in Internet Options.
>
> I can't find any settings in Internet Options that would let the machine
> connect to all of the sites I can dream up, but not connect to
> support.microsoft.com, or any other microsoft.com page.
>
> What's keeping me from going to MSoft pages? The site works because I can
> get to it from other machines.
>
> I'm running XP Home, SP2, IE6, FireFox 3.5, Chrome, and Safari. The
> message is always, Sorry <browser> can't find Microsoft.com.
>


From: Paul on 12 May 2010 12:44
Jeff Strickland wrote:
> My machiune is running under a variety, maybe multitude, of viruses. I have
> managed to remove no less than 5 virii, a couple of malwares, and some
> spyware. Still no worky ...
>
> System Restore. I hate when that happens.
>
> The Hosts file had a single entry for the Local Host, so that wasn't the
> problem.
>
> After System Restore, I'm now loading the updates. So far there were 73 on
> the first round, a few random updates, SP3, and now 36 more. That's alot of
> updates.
>

You just can't get good malware any more /sarcasm

Normally, System Restore would also be infected. It's a surprise
to me, that anything good would come from using it, as it
so often falls victim to the malware.

Maybe some part of your malware is laying low, and waiting for
an opportunity.

It's one of the reasons, I like my off-line scanning CD. This
is a self-booting CD, running something like Gentoo, which
downloads virus definitions using DHCP, and can scan any Windows
partition you're using. The partition letters in the menu, are fakes
and are a simple sequential listing of all the partitions.
By opening a terminal window, and doing a change directory
(cd) to one of the partitions, then listing it with "ls",
I can usually figure out which partition is which. The labels
aren't used either. But other than that, it is a decent freebie.

http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/

If you need to test, place a copy of EICAR on your partition,
so you'll get at least one "positive" while scanning. Back when
I was using some freebie Trend Micro stuff, I could have
used something like this, because I could never be sure
that online scanner, was doing anything. It threw up so many
warnings and error messages, you could never tell what it
was doing. This doesn't prove your AV works, but it's a
start. If I run the KAV CD above, it complains about this,
and I tell it to "skip it".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file

Paul
From: Jeff Strickland on 12 May 2010 17:35

"Paul" <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote in message
news:hseltq$cd5$1(a)speranza.aioe.org...
> Jeff Strickland wrote:
>> My machiune is running under a variety, maybe multitude, of viruses. I
>> have managed to remove no less than 5 virii, a couple of malwares, and
>> some spyware. Still no worky ...
>>
>> System Restore. I hate when that happens.
>>
>> The Hosts file had a single entry for the Local Host, so that wasn't the
>> problem.
>>
>> After System Restore, I'm now loading the updates. So far there were 73
>> on the first round, a few random updates, SP3, and now 36 more. That's
>> alot of updates.
>>
>
> You just can't get good malware any more /sarcasm
>
> Normally, System Restore would also be infected. It's a surprise
> to me, that anything good would come from using it, as it
> so often falls victim to the malware.
>

System Restore is on a different drive. Well, the same physical drive, but a
different partition. The Sys. Restore in on a volume formatted to FAT32,
while the OS is on NTFS.

But whatever, I was able to restore -- so far.

I'm up to 1000 updates and service packs. Sheesh! I didn't know how bad
Windoze sucks until I started downloading all of the patches at once.




From: Paul on 12 May 2010 20:31
Jeff Strickland wrote:
> "Paul" <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote in message
> news:hseltq$cd5$1(a)speranza.aioe.org...
>> Jeff Strickland wrote:
>>> My machiune is running under a variety, maybe multitude, of viruses. I
>>> have managed to remove no less than 5 virii, a couple of malwares, and
>>> some spyware. Still no worky ...
>>>
>>> System Restore. I hate when that happens.
>>>
>>> The Hosts file had a single entry for the Local Host, so that wasn't the
>>> problem.
>>>
>>> After System Restore, I'm now loading the updates. So far there were 73
>>> on the first round, a few random updates, SP3, and now 36 more. That's
>>> alot of updates.
>>>
>> You just can't get good malware any more /sarcasm
>>
>> Normally, System Restore would also be infected. It's a surprise
>> to me, that anything good would come from using it, as it
>> so often falls victim to the malware.
>>
>
> System Restore is on a different drive. Well, the same physical drive, but a
> different partition. The Sys. Restore in on a volume formatted to FAT32,
> while the OS is on NTFS.
>
> But whatever, I was able to restore -- so far.
>
> I'm up to 1000 updates and service packs. Sheesh! I didn't know how bad
> Windoze sucks until I started downloading all of the patches at once.
>

Perhaps we have a terminology difference ? I'm referring to the stuff stored
in System Volume Information on your C: drive. The OS keeps a copy of the
registry in there, as well as tracking deltas to the OS. In theory, it would be
a great way to repair the OS (in the event of say, some problem with
software installation of one sort or another). But with malware, it attacks
the contents of that folder, so if you attempt to restore to an earlier
date, the malware gets to live on.

The typical advice is to turn off System Restore, so the restore points are
flushed, and the System Volume Information folder starts fresh.

Pre-built machines, like a Dell or an HP, can have a separate partition,
with a copy of the OS in it, which can also be used to "blow away" the
contents of the C: drive, but that requires a lot of repair work
later. I understand that can be attacked, but perhaps not all malware
goes to that much trouble.

Still, a 1000 updates sounds like a lot. I would have thought installing
SP3 first, then visiting Windows Update, would reduce that to a couple
hundred. I've had a few months now, where the WinXP updates were
around 10 or so, so it doesn't take long to add up.

You can get SP3 as a separate download, which might be a good thing to
hide a copy of somewhere, so you won't have to download it again. At
one time, you could get this on a CD from Microsoft (suitable
for people on dialup, who can't tie up the line that long). There
is an even bigger download version of this, but I don't know what
advantage that version has.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5B33B5A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4&displaylang=en

Paul
From: - Bobb - on 12 May 2010 21:00

"Jeff Strickland" <crwlrjeff(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:hsf70i$3bh$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
> But whatever, I was able to restore -- so far.
>
> I'm up to 1000 updates and service packs. Sheesh! I didn't know how bad
> Windoze sucks until I started downloading all of the patches at once.
>

When you're done, you're gonna do a backup (to another drive or maybe DVD),
right ?


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