Hi Gary,
A couple questions before I attack this beast today:
1. How do I image the partition? Is there anything built in to Win98 to do
that, or any free tools to do it? I don't have Ghost, but I know it can do
that.
2. What happens to the trojan that Stinger supposedly removed and the first
few spyware/adware that SpyBot supposedly removed before the crash? Are
parts of them still there since the registry has been restored?
And a couple answers to your questions:
Yes, I only ran Spybot's normal scan and removed the items it suggested. No
Immunize, no Tea Timer. (That's why I was shocked when it did what it did.)
Although I use Immunize on my own 2 computers and have never had any trouble
with it.
By "another virus scanner", I meant besides Stinger.exe. This computer used
to have an old old McAfee with old old DAT files. A virus (I think) disabled
it, and a friend who knows less about computers than I do told him to just
delete some of its files. I think they finally got it uninstalled, because I
don't see it in Add/Remove Programs. Anyway, I suspected viruses might be
its worst problem that's why I started out with Stinger. I think I'll
install AVG on it and see what it finds too (plus show him how to get new DAT
files!!!)
Thank you so much for your help! :-)
"Gary S. Terhune" wrote:
"SherryB" wrote in message
...
I'm the one with the "SpyBot killed my computer" thread going on.
Assuming I
get things back to normal again (big assumption right now =:-O), then
what?
OK, now that we know you got it back on its feet, it's time for the "now
what?"
This computer has not had virus protection for about 6 months on
cablemodem,
and although it has SpyBotS&D and AdAware's latest versions installed
on it,
they appear to never have been ran. How can I back up the system
state in 98
so that I can avoid such a huge crash when removal tools don't work?
By imaging the partition. There is no "System Restore" in Windows 98.
Scanreg saves a few critical configuration files (Registry, System.ini,
Win.ini and maybe MSDOS.SYS) but that is scant protection.
Should
I run SpyBot again on it? Or switch to AdAware?
Spybot *should* be OK if all you run is a normal scan, not Immunize or
Tea TImer, etc. But another person just posted who had the *exact* same
problem you did after running Spybot, so I have to wonder. Did you
*only* run the scanner and remove the items it suggested?
AdAware is much safer than Spybot. Yes, I would run it.
Should I run another
antivirus scanner on it first? I also have AVG free edition, should I
install that on there first and scan? Do you guys know of a better
way?
You previously said that it had no AV installed. True? If so, then you
have to install *something*. AdAware and Spybot are *not* antivirus
applications.
I've never had so much trouble cleaning a machine, but I guess I've
never
seen one so badly infected. :-(
See my articles:
"Clean Boot--What it is and why you need it."
http://grystmill.com/articles/cleanboot.htm
"Security!"
http://grystmill.com/articles/security.htm
--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User