Okay so yesterday out of nowhere some spyware was installed on my PC. One of the components it installed was a "Security Toolbar 7.1" in IE, which along with the little icon/bubbles at the bottom right side of my screen, continues to spew psudo-security BS warnings my way (they don't even spell "private" or "balloon" correctly). I Googled the problem, and nothing people suggest is working. The main problem seems to be that this thing is loaded/created everytime explorer.exe is loaded. I know that explorer is important. However, I used SUPERAntiSpyware and AVG, which both caught it and supposedly deleted/quarantined it, but yet it still remains. I even used Smitfraudfix (I think that's what it's called) to no avail. Thing is even showing up in safe mode, so despite loading my PC that way, I'm still getting the messages. The only thing that doesn't load are the Internet browsers that pop up every few minutes. What really kind of bugs me is this thing got past Firefox... I thought people said when you move to Firefox this stuff stops?! Ugh. If there's any definitive program that'll work (I'm tired of downloading program after program), can anyone let me know? My last resort would be transferring all my files to my external harddrive (can this be done in safe mode?) and just re-installing Windows... but if I can avoid having to do that, I'd like to take that route. Anyways, anyone mind helping me out here? Thanks.
All I can recommend is posting a hijack this log to Daniweb (a techie website I frequent whenever I have problems). Seems like the problem is not specific to IE. I'm assuming you've already done a system restore?
I read doing a system restore with an infection like this wouldn't do anything. I'll try it though. What's surprising though is my problem seems very uncommon... All the answers I've found so far suggest that in safe mode, this thing wouldn't load, but alas, it loads in safe mode. But thanks Omar, I'll go to Daniweb if nothing else works.
Reboot in safe mode, remove any cords/disable wireless adapter bringing internet to your computer, run the spyware removal program in safe mode, remove the spyware, reboot in regular mode. Should work.
"I thought people said when you move to Firefox this stuff stops?! Ugh. If there's any definitive program that'll work (I'm tired of downloading program after program), can anyone let me know?" It didn't install through firefox. Most spyware comes in via ActiveX which isn't exploitable in firefox, it must have been bundled with something you installed.
Honestly, I'd just back up your stuff, wipe your hard drive and reinstall Windows. Some of this crap gets installed so deep inside the OS that it's almost impossible to get back to a fully clean state. We see this at work all the time and systems like this just end up getting rebuilt from scratch because there's no way to get them 100% clean
I actually back everything up and do a clean Windows install about once a year for this very reason. Plus it's always awesome to see how much faster everything runs on a fresh install too.
@Mark: Safe mode doesn't stop the infection from loading. It loads whenever explorer.exe is loaded. For example, certain programs that end explorer's task also removes the pop-ups, however once explorer is launched again, the pop-ups return. I'm going to try unplugging it from the Internet though. @Neil: Are you sure? The last program I used yesterday aside from Firefox was Photoshop, except when I loaded IE to test a design. I haven't installed anything for awhile now nor have I visited any websites that sport such vicious ads. I could be wrong, but considering it came out of nowhere yesterday after accessing my brower(s), I assumed it bypassed pretty much everything that was slated to "protect" my PC from these type of attacks. Thanks for the help though guys. Much appreciated. edit: I'm just going to reinstall windows all together. But again, thanks to everyone who helped. I really appreciate it!
oh... Well, I've got some pretty important files on mine, but I definitely don't want all of them to continue if I decide to reinstall windows... so i'm thinking about 50 Gigs... is that a lot?
My external harddrive is 250GB. It cost a couple hundred dollars. It was definitely worth it though since I've used 80GB alone on just my work (yeah, production files are huge. )... great investment if you're constantly working on important projects.
Thanks for the warning. Is there anything else I should know before reinstalling? This will be first time I'm doing it on my own so if there's anything else I should know, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
First time you're installing windows? I do it at least 4-5 times a year Anyway, you can avoid buying a new hard drive if you split the one you have into two partitons.