I had a bad computer scare yesterday...
Thu, 05/31/2007 - 10:38 | 
I was surfing around the web and minding my own business when I saw this on my screen:
I took the screen shot and immediately restarted my computer without clicking the box at all but it must have been too late already. I went to a few more sites and then my monitor turned black. I thought my monitor had died but it wasn't the monitor, it was the computer.
I rebooted my computer but it would not start back up. It kept restarting itself over and over and would only let me start up in safe mode. (Thank goodness for that!)
I don't know if it was the errorsafe trojan that caused my problems but if not it was a mighty big coincidence. I did a virus scan but it didn't turn up anything. I really thought my computer had bit the big one.
I don't even know how I fixed it! I ran the virus checker from one of those online virus checker sites and I did a system restore to a previous date. I was really scared for about 3 hours.
The only thing that hasn't been fixed is my World of Warcraft game and I'm going to have re-install that one. Maybe this is a good thing after all. hehe
Hey there Anna, Seems to me
Hey there Anna,
Seems to me that your comp picked up some spyware or a trojan, but probably some spyware. That could have come through Internet Explorer or a free program that you installed. It's hard to tell these days, they try to take various routes into people's systems.
My guess would be that your system restore is what fixed the computer. Going back to a previous "stable" state probably replaced compromised files with healthy ones, or it could have removed it entirely.
I would recommend that you get a program called Spybot Search & Destroy which can be obtained from this website: http://www.safer-networking.org/ . I also recommend Ad-Aware SE from Lavasoft, which is available from this site: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Both of those programs are free. Ad-Aware has a "pro" option that has an "always on" protection program, and Spybot is supported via donations.
No single anti-spyware program will find all of the bugs, so running a couple of them is a good way to weed most of them out.
Some anti-virus programs will scan for spyware, but I don't put much stock into them. For example, Norton and McAfee are very popular but are not particularly good at what they're supposed to do. They also consume goodly amounts of system resources, which is completely unnecessary.
Anyway I'm rambling. :) Later.
I use Ad-Adware every day
I use Ad-Adware every day but I was wondering if it is any good to me since I use Firefox, not IE.
I've heard about Spybot Search & Destroy. I installed it once a long time ago but I couldn't really figure out how to use it, hehe... I'll have to try again...
The bad (depending on how you look at it) think about this whole ordeal is that I had recently downloaded some WoW patches but when I restored it gummed up the whole game. Now I have to uninstall and install it. :(