the ultimate f*up! I’m so lucky…

[Robert]

Ok, even though I’m running norton antivirus, have a firewall both in my router and on xp, one of my computers at home have started a slow descent into hell.
When win xp starts it says "lass.exe blablabla, shutdown in 60 sec."
so I have to hurry to open cmd and type shutdown -a, to stop it from shutting down. Searching the web on the error tells me I’m the lucky winner of a sasser virus. But neither, the cleaner, norton, nor mcaffe finds anything wrong with my computer. And yes, I’ve downloaded the latest patches etc.
So my only bet, after 3 evenings of trying to work my way around it, is to do the good old format c: and reinstall xp. BUT, I’m not allowed to install xp, since the stupid virus has change my rights from administrator to guest. Also, going into cmd and typing format c: doesn’t work either. Nor will the computer boot from the xp cd. Even though I’ve put my cdrom as the 1 boot thingy.
So from where I stand now it looks like I just as well chuck out the hd containing the boot partition, buy a new hd and install xp on that.
So yeah, I’m doing fine.

[Anthony]

nah dude.

download a "windows 98 startup disk"
download "smartdrv.exe"
copy smartdrv to the boot disk you downloaded.
boot to A: without CD support
run a: fdisk /mbr
run a: fdisk
delete the partitions / create new partitions and set active.
Reboot to the A:
Enable CDROM via the boot disk
a: format c: /yes
a: smartdrv c+
d: cd i386
d: winnt

d: is the CD ROM..

i can help you more if you need it, shoot me email.

if you wanted to try to fix what you have:

go to Administrative Tools > Services and right-click Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and hit properties.
Go to the Recovery Tab
and change those three to Take No Action

you would still be fucked, but the computer won’t reboot anymore

[Mattman]

Ack! Stop! Run windows updates first!

We’ve had this problem at work, and while it’s caused by the virus, it doesn’t mean that you actually have it. It’s your PC responding to an attack.

If you have the same thing, there should be a critical update to solve the problem…

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

:aliensmile:

[Robert]

thanks for the update mattman, only problem is that I’m only seeing this:
Windows Update has encountered an error and cannot display the requested page.
at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com”>http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
but hopefully that’ll change soon.

[Robert]

and strangely enough, it has completely screwed msn messenger as well. even though it’s 100 % certain that I’ve typed the correct login/password, it tells me that my username etc doesn’t exist.

oh and anthony, I’m sure your recipe works. only problem is that it requires a floppydisk. don’t think I’ve seen, let alone owned, one of those in several years
+ thanks for the RPC tip!

[Robert]

OK, since none of my attempts to pull my pc out from the bog of fucked up trojans that it’s currently drowning in seem to work, I’ve started thinking about a nice and spectacular way to kill the worthless shit.
So… any idea?
What I’ve come up with so far:
1.taking it out into the streets, and try to get one of those big machines that flattens asphalt to run over it.
2.giving it a couple of rounds with my shotgun.
3.mounting it on a pair of skis and wish it luck in the nearby k90 skijump.
4.a combination of 2. and 3.

also, does anyone have a idea as to why adaware would freeze during a scan?
not necessarily on the same place, it depends on which folders I tell it to scan. nevertheless, it allways hangs. and that kind of sucks, since it has found a splendid amount of sheit on c:

[Anthony]

watch Office Space…. see what they do to the fax machine.
…that’s a good idea.

IMO – I would never try to fix a pc infected with anything.
easy enough for me to replace the disk and re-image the machine.

[Robert]

I´m formatting the living daylights out of it as we speak. The drag with that is that I have to reinstall all the drivers for my motherboard, graphic accelerator, videocodecs, programs, mozilla etc.. And that is such a bore
plus, I´m not as organized in the computer department as I probably should be, which means that I have to prod around in drawers etc for the cd´s containing my software et al. Perhaps I´ll learn some day.

[Anthony]

that system restore for XP comes in handy sometimes.

so does a little program called ‘ghost’

once you get your pc all set up nice and sweet, use ghost to ‘ghost’ your hard drive image to a dvd or network share or something.
when you crash, you can just ‘ghost’ it back over

some viruses tho, live in the master boot record on the hard disk, and they are not removed with the simple ‘format’ command.

you should go to the hard drive web site, and download their utilities to fully whack a drive safely.

[Author]

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