January 13th, 2004
Frustration
#128
A word of advice
Wow. My click-happy father said yes to a popup ad last night. This afternoon, I start up the computer, and around 20 processes, one program, and one status bar icon, all of which I’ve never seen before, show up. I go to Start | Programs, and I find that four new programs have been added to the list. I run Dr. Watson, and I find that around 40 processes have been added to the Startup list (some of which report as being part of Windows ME – I have Windows 98SE). I run Ad-Aware (thank heavens for Ad-Aware), and it finds upwards of 450 objects, including 4 folders and 200-some files.
I’m going to password-protect our family computer and delete any references to M$IE on our computer now.
[Update] Still trying to recover… it’s no surprise I haven’t had that much success eradicating those hundred-some viruses, trojans, worms, and pieces of spyware that are undoubtedly on my computer, considering that my antivirus software no longer works, because whatever is on my computer is automatically disabling it.
A word of advice: if you encounter a popup, close it. Don’t click on it. If it’s one that looks like a dialog box, don’t do anything with it. Instead, close all the legitimate programs you have open, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, select any of the things listed there (except Explorer), hit End Task, and repeat the process until the only thing listed at the End Program dialog is Explorer.
Then go and shell out at least $50 for half-decent antivirus/firewall software.
When you’re done with that, make the switch and get either Mozilla Firebird… or a Mac.