Explorer debilitated by spyware... 2

[CorpCo]

I was minding my business, trying to get some information on the net for a client when one of those annoying pop-up ads flew in my face. I was in a hurry, so not heeding my own words said not one day before to the entire office: "I don't care what it is...DON'T CLICK ON IT!", I clicked the "x" to close the ad. I was immediately bombarded with several different spyware and adware bugs. As soon as I saw this happening, I went to "add/remove programs" to get rid of the obvious problems, then ran both adaware and spybot to remove any other miscellany. It seemed I was successful, but I had a problem with Explorer from the moment it all occurred.

At first, it was just a little slow. Then it would intermittently be fine, then not respond. Now I don't think it works at all. I use the internet A LOT for my job so I had to find a remedy. That remedy was to download Firefox. Firefox is fine, but it doesn't work on everything. I want my Explorer back!

I am hoping that someone can help me with this without my having to reinstall my operating system. I am currently running XP Pro.

Anyone? I'd love to be able to fix this the easy way!

Christy

 

[N2NT]

The default is to auto update and run automatically at 3am every morning...you can customize it as needed.

As advanced as the MS Antispy is...it doesn't catch everything and is only as good as the last update. Sometimes a simple re-write of a worm or trojan will take weeks catch up with on the anti-spy/hijacker side.

 

[aquias]

In addition it contains several very similiar tools to Spybot, but (again) the interface is much easier to use...at least in my opinion.

 

[CorpCo]

I downloaded and tried it and I think it's spiffy. I'm still going to run Spybot and Ad-aware. It's just a crying shame that we should have to run 5 programs a week just to keep the goobers out of our computers. I recently had to wipe out and re-install the operating system on my friend's computer because her kids clicked on about 100 too many pop-ups and the thing was completely infested. I wonder how many people out there don't know what to do and end up paying someone to fix their computer when it shouldn't have been broken in the first place. It's annoying to think about it.

Thanks to everyone for your input. It saved my browser!

Christy

 

[aquias]

You're welcome! And I would bet that this is becoming a serious user issue for home systems. In the past two weeks I've cleared off five friends systems and installed some protection software for them.

Oh, last side note for you to Christy, you may also want to look into Spyware Blaster. It isn't a removal tool, just a silent prevention tool that blocks several known active X spyware programs...

And last, but not least (I'm in a rambling mood today!), depending on your users setup (whether or not they have admin rights to the system) you may want to look into

http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/.../library/en-us/dncode/html/secure11152004.asp

This is a program written to launch applications with only user level permissions, it prevents a lot of spyware/malware from being able to install itself to your system. Anyone here that needs admin access to their system runs web browsing and E-Mail through this.

 

[CorpCo]

Ohhhhhhh....I need to do that on practically everyone's computer in the office. I have most of them set up as administrators due to the fact that certain programs wouldn't work for them as they didn't have the right to use them without being administrators.

I can do this over the weekend. I want to do it on my own computer first though. I have a question or two for you first. 1. I have the Firefox browser too. How do I make Explorer my default browser again? I looked, but couldn't find any way to do this. 2. Should I remove administrative rights for both browsers or can I even do it on the Firefox?

Thanks for your help aquias!

Christy

By the way, we are running Symantec's Antivirus Corporate Edition on our server and on the client computers, but it obviously didn't find all those Trojans that Housecall found. Is there some way to add more comprehensive protection to Symantec's Corporate Edition without having to buy a whole new program? I guess I could just ask Symantec, but since you're so knowledgeable....

 

[CorpCo]

Oh...and one more question:

I can't much trust everyone in the office to handle the updates on Windows, much less to run multiple spyware removal tools at least once a week. I would like to remove at least some of the responsibility from them by using this:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sus/default.mspx

Any experience with this? Will it make my life easier or more bogged down?

Thanks for your input.

 

[2ffat]

SUS is about to change very shortly. A beta version, WSUS is out. It sounds very interesting. SUS had some drawbacks which WSUS is supposed to overcome, e.g., updating SQL server.


James P. Cottingham
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[sup]To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.[/sup]