Does your computer have a virus?
Posted Oct 4, 2008 @ 6:34 pm, Viewed by 5778 Visitors, Read 6245 Times.Have you had computer problems lately? In the past few years my computers caught a few mean viruses. Despite using top of the line antivirus software (Norton and Symantec for example), my computers got infected badly.
In 2006 and 2007 I reformatted my desktop computer's hard drive twice to eradicate viruses. In 2007 I was on vacation and my laptop computer picked up a virus over a wi-fi network. After that, all it would do is startup, reboot and continue rebooting. I took the computer to a specialist. He managed to copy the data onto a portable hard drive but could not remove the virus. I did the reformat routine again.
As far as computer viruses go, things have been okay with my Windows Vista computer up until a few weeks ago. I think I know how it all started.
I was doing some Google searches for house-related keywords and saw something different. I was looking for a "house for sale in Hawaii" and noticed a search result from an obscure webpage that wasn't related to real estate. I clicked on the link and suddenly a pop-up appeared asking if I wanted to install some odd software. I clicked the "X" to close the window and continued on my merry way.
Days later, my antivirus software alerted me to an infection by Bloodhound Exploit 193. The software could not delete the virus but it quarantined it. I figured everything would be okay. Wrong.
A few more days passed and the antivirus warned me about Bloodhound Exploit again. This time it showed two entries for the virus. It quarantined the virus and I was concerned but things were still working okay.
A week passed and there were two more bouts with the same virus. Then the problems got worse. I started getting errors on my CD/DVD drive. And then, the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death." It happened twice in one day. I had never seen the Blue Screen of Death on Windows Vista before.
I used my WD portable drive to sync files. I also copied many critical files to DVD for extra safety. Then I started the file recovery procedure to get the computer back to where it was on day one. The recovery went smoothly, then Service pack 1 was downloaded and installed.
When my software applications were reinstalled I started copying data from the portable drive back onto the computer. This was the first time I had done so and I ran into some problems. Apparently the WD drive copied some folders but not the data inside them! I imagine this was my fault, I probably did not click a box or something like that. Luckily I had most of the data on DVD.
The computer is running fine now! I will be more careful about clicking carelessly. If you haven't had computer virus problems in awhile, count your blessings and remember to keep multiple copies of your most important data.
Aloha, Mike Bates
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Mike Bates is a realtor associate on the island of Oahu. He's lived on Oahu, Maui, Molokai and the Big Island for 28 years and is here to share his knowledge of the Hawaiian Islands with you. Read More
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I just found out that my 2 REW websites - yes my websites - had been infected with some bad code. They think it occurred through my ftp client (I used to have ftp access to both of my REW sites). Unfortunately, I no longer have it because of what happened.
I have been advised to take the computer in to have them remove the virus as even with antivirus software it can't always be completely removed. So we're planning on getting that done. My computer is working but it has slowed down even though we reformatted it and tried to do everything we could think of on this end.
We also backed everything up on our external hard drive but I always wonder if we're not just carrying the virus over to that, depending on where it originated from. Plus, I'm on a network of 4 computers so I'm assuming they've all been affected although I'm not sure - we'll start with the main computer and see.
I recently read an article about checking out downloaded Wordpress templates as it was found that one so-called reputable site (not sponsored by Wordpress but offering free skins) was delivering templates loaded with malicious code (some was found in the footer of one or more templates).
I wish I knew more about all of this code and how my own websites could have been infected the way they supposedly were. It's scary!