The Only Good Virus...
...is a dead virus. Dang, I thought I was done with this sort of stuff, with XP's built-in firewall and GIANT AntiSpyware. The latter really is an excellent product and it cleaned out a load of spyware (as well as a few trojans) the first time I ran it. Until now, it's stopped every single spyware, adware, trojan and virus that's tried to install itself on my rig.Until today, that is.Out of the blue, I had a million Internet Explorer windows popping up as soon as I went into my start page (Google), and not even my trusty pop-up blocker could do anything about it. Then a bunch of programs started running themselves. Well, just two really - mm.exe and gamma.exe - but there were five-six of each running simultaneously. And prior to all of this, some weird mssupdate.exe tried forcing itself into my startup programs list (even though GIANT told me it was blocked, msconfig showed it wasn't).Then, much to my own surprise, I discovered to my immense horror that I had forgotten to install any anti-spyware software after my last harddrive crash/reformat. No worries, I thought. Such an important program would surely be on my old 'Downloads' CD, which contains most software I've ever used.But no, of course not. That'd be too easy, wouldn't it? So, I fire up Opera (great browser, that) - which somehow manages to block any and all pop-ups - and make my way over to Grisoft for the latest free version of AVG. After three tries/reboots (My connection freezes sometimes, then my connection tray and after terminating it all, I can't reconnect without rebooting. Stupid non-XP compatible modem drivers.), I finally get it downloaded. Install, scan, remove infected files. I breathe out.Then, after a short pause, hell breaks out again! This time AVG's popping up, telling me it's finding virii left and right. The blasted mm.exe and gamma.exe buggers are back again somehow. I delete them through AVG, but they keep coming back and GIANT AntiSpyware keeps telling me it's blocked mssupdate.exe from the startup programs list. (Again, it did appear in the list even after being "blocked".)I pull a 'regedit' and go searching the registry for mssupdate.exe and find several cases. Weird thing is, I keep deleting them, but they keep coming back.I do a search for mssupdate on Google (through Opera) and find it on the list of new ###### programs in the last definition file from GIANT. Huzzah! I fire up AntiSpyware and grab the latest spyware definitions. Another scan and mssupdate pops up, together with some other virus called BM2 something. Remove.Seems to work now. No more sign of any trouble so far. Running another spyware scan just to be sure. (Funny how mssupdate.exe isn't in the latest virus definitions, by the way.)I still don't know what kind of virus mm.exe and gamma.exe were part of, but they obviously popped up after mssupdate.exe did its thing.Virus stuff is scary stuff, that's for sure. Hopefully, I'll manage to keep my rig clean from now on.
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