Computer help

[MidnightFlyer]

Hi,

I visited the website songmeanings about half an hour ago, and clicked on a link for a page within the website. It took a while to load, before redirecting to an IP address (178.162.151.26 - in northeast Lithuania), and caught a flash of a website called something like 'winsoftvirus'. I closed them within milliseconds of them appearing - the page was still blank at the time. Research took me to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFixer, which says the website for this was abolished in Dec 2008.

I'm worried if anything got installed (i.e. keylogger, though it says it specialises in scareware), just wondering if I'm OK and still virus-free.

I ran a quick McAfee scan afterwards - all was OK, and my lappy switches off and loads up as normal.

Thanks for your help, I really need my mind putting to rest over this.

Matt

 

[blackfive460]

Download & do a full scan with the free version of MalwareBytes (www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php). If that comes back clear you should be Ok.
If you are really worried, you could also do a system restore back to the most recent point prior to the suspected infection. Do that before you install and scan.

 

[ainsworth74]

You're probably okay but give this whirl just to make sure.

 

[Captain Chaos]

I would download a copy of malwarebytes and run a full scan.

This link:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-vundo-virtumonde

contains a lot of useful info although is a bit techy. Just go down to the download link and go from there. It is recommended to download a program called rkill.exe and run it before using malwarebytes. It is useful in that it forces malicious processes to stop before scanning. (If it doesn't find any then that is a fairly positive sign).

If you haven't had any weird pop-up messages or any slow down in computer performance chances are you may not be infected.

 

[Blue Pool Halt]

And in future , use Firefox browser with 'No Script' add-on.

No script add-on stops any potentially harmful scripts from running at default (bit like the chain on your front door).

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Thanks for help all. Will try tomorrow. Ran a Quick Scan in Anti Malware and it came back clear. No pop ups etc happened at time. Will do full McAfee scan and a full Malware scan tomorrow evening, and I'll let you know should anything happen. Sent from phone. Thanks all once more, much appreciated. Matt

 

[junglejames]

My dad got this winfixer on his computer, and it literally rendered it useless. He eventually got rid of it, but not without a lot of trouble. If you keep getting these popups warning of viruses, as suggested on that wiki page, then you would seem to have a variant of winfixer embedded into your computer. Its a massive pain to get rid of. My dad had to go into safemode to try and get rid of it.

 

[Jordy]

It seems pretty certain that it hasn't infected you, and in reply to junglejames I wouldn't really say a virus that can be removed by going into safe mode is a massive pain to get rid of!

 

[junglejames]

It seems pretty certain that it hasn't infected you, and in reply to junglejames I wouldn't really say a virus that can be removed by going into safe mode is a massive pain to get rid of!

Winfix isnt actually a virus in itself, and yes, it apparently was a massive pain to get rid of. The fact you had to go into safe mode to attempt it points to this.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Wikipedia said the site was closed in Dec 08. Think I should be OK. Will let you all know tomorrow though. Thanks all once again.

 

[Ivo]

Interesting how this thread has already generated AVG Google Ads...

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Thanks all for help, just to let you know scan on Thursday night scanned about 208,000 items on my computer, and found nothing, so i hope I'm in the clear. Thanks once more for all the help all.

 

[SS4]

Interesting how this thread has already generated AVG Google Ads...

Mine is a free scan for Windows errors - very useful for a Linux user :roll:

Thanks all for help, just to let you know scan on Thursday night scanned about 208,000 items on my computer, and found nothing, so i hope I'm in the clear. Thanks once more for all the help all.

A full reinstall is always good fun but I'd imagine you're in the clear

 

[yorkie]

Use Ubuntu (instead of Windows) and a good hosts file, and your safety online will be massively increased...

 

[bakerstreet]

Use Ubuntu (instead of Windows) and a good hosts file, and your safety online will be massively increased...

Hi Yorkie

Does
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Use Ubuntu (instead of Windows) and a good hosts file, and your safety online will be massively increased...

(Sorry for abandonded reply - on the mobile)

Hi Yorkie

Does Ubuntu support general software like Adobe products and Microsoft word. I'd love to find a convenient alternative to Windows (I'm running XP but dislike 7) but have a number of other software products which I'm not sure other platforms support.

Also if I installed it and it all went wrong do you know if my recovery discs would still work?

 

[SS4]

(Sorry for abandonded reply - on the mobile)

Hi Yorkie

Does Ubuntu support general software like Adobe products and Microsoft word. I'd love to find a convenient alternative to Windows (I'm running XP but dislike 7) but have a number of other software products which I'm not sure other platforms support.

Also if I installed it and it all went wrong do you know if my recovery discs would still work?

Flash and Reader have native versions. You might get photoshop working via wine but it's hit and miss. Older versions of Office also run in wine. You may check whether an app works by checking wine app db although for Word it'll probably be easier to use libreoffice/openoffice

Recovery disk will work fine, especially if it's a CD instead of a partition. If it's the latter it will still work, just don't overwrite the partition! Hardware support tends to be better in Linux due to kernel modules (my ancient bluetooth is plug and play) but in general if it doesn't work you'll have a much harder time getting it to work (one exception is nvidia which is easy). Thus I would recommend using the live cd before doing a full install

 

[LexyBoy]

Does Ubuntu support general software like Adobe products and Microsoft word. I'd love to find a convenient alternative to Windows (I'm running XP but dislike 7) but have a number of other software products which I'm not sure other platforms support.

Short answer: No, but...

Most commercial software developers don’t support Linux, and those that do are usually limited by the fact that there are thousands of different versions of Linux out there, so it’s very hard to produce a piece of closed-source software which works on all these different versions.

There are open-source alternatives to pretty much any piece of commercial software though, so unless you really need to use Word, for example, you will be fine (OpenOffice is the Linux equivalent to Microsoft Office, which is nowadays pretty powerful and easy to use). It is possible to get quite a lot of Windows software running using Wine as SS4 says, though it can be a bit of a faff, especially for complex stuff like Word. If you use Photoshop, GIMP is very powerful though perhaps less intuitive (IIRC it’s possible to get a plug-in which makes it look like Photoshop, which would lower the learning curve). All the usual browsers are available, except Internet Explorer which you really shouldn’t be using anyway.

OpenOffice, GIMP and quite a bit of other open-source software is also available for Windows, so you can try it out and see whether it would do the job for you.

Anything else which you don’t want to replace, you can try running through Wine – see the list posted by SS4 – or, if you use it fairly infrequently, can remain on Windows (it’s very simple to install Ubuntu as “dual boot”, so that you can choose whether to boot into Windows or Ubuntu when you turn your computer on).

Also if I installed it and it all went wrong do you know if my recovery discs would still work?

You can try Ubuntu* without installing it, by creating a LiveCD or USB disk with the OS on. Click on “Show me how” on point 3 here to have a look) You can do this from Windows and simply reboot your computer with the CD or USB disk inserted and it will boot into Ubuntu. It will be slower than if installed on your hard disk, but gives you a chance to check it out, make sure all your hardware works OK etc.

It’s also possible to install Ubuntu from within Windows using Wubi – see here - I don’t have any experience with it though. AIUI it’s sort of like running Ubuntu within Windows, so you get a bit of a performance hit, and aren’t really breaking away from Windows (though you would be protected from most of the problems afflicting Windows).

If you do install anything to your hard disk, always make a backup of all your personal data. This should really be done as a matter of course anyway, but of course none of us do

* and lots of other Linux versions, though Ubuntu is one of the most intuitive and defintitely best supported)

 

[SS4]

I've not used wubi but I believe it acts as a virtual machine with the added option of giving a choice of OS at boot. iTunes [sic] will not work, it has never worked and never will so be wary if you have a newer i* device

As lexyboy implied it's much easier to use open source software native to Linux and only very specialist software doesn't have a free alternative

 

[yorkie]

No need to use Microsoft Word, as there is Open Office to replace Word/Excel/Powerpoint.

As for Adobe products, I did get Photoshop (for Windows) installed (with difficulty) using Wine, but there were issues with it and I would be concerned about reliability. GIMP seems good for what I use Photoshop for, anyway.

You can try Ubuntu by loading the CD and choose the 'try' option (obviously that'll be slow, reading from CD), or get a USB Hard drive, install Ubuntu on that and boot from that, leaving your hard drive untouched. Or install it alongside your existing Windows installation on your hard drive.

The following Windows products that I use, work well in Wine:
- Avantix Traveller (never crashes for me using Ubuntu & Wine but often crashes on Windows!)
- SimSig (install Swindon to get the fonts to work!)
- Memory Map

And as for Linux software...

I prefer Banshee to Windows Media Player, as it's less bloated (among other things).

Pidgin works better on Ubuntu than on Windows

VLC Player works well and I even got it to send Dolby 5.1 to my amp. via SPDIF.

If you really feel you can't do without Windows, install the 64bit version of Ubuntu, install at least 6GB RAM (and assign 3GB to Windows), and then use Virtual Box to run a virtual Windows PC, in 'seamless mode'. You can virtualise your Windows PC using a trial of Acronis TrueImage workstation, the trial is fully functional. There's probably other software to do it too but I used that and it worked brilliantly. Use 'bridged' mode if you want your network card to have full functionality.

I know over a dozen people who use Ubuntu, I also know loads of people who use Google Android for their phones, which is also Linux-based.

Microsoft and Apple should be very worried indeed!

 

[bakerstreet]

All your advice above

Thank you. Is there no problem this site can't solve !!

 

[Nick W]

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is that you can run windows on top of linux using a virtualiser such as vmware player (available free). It won't run too much slower either In fact windows 2003 server runs faster than vista runs natively!

 

[Crossover]

Server software will generally run faster than a standard OS due to the stripped down nature of it.
With standard OS its a case of the majority of things are turned on (for ease of users)
With server OS its generally a case everything it turned off by default and has to be turned on if required - also improves security

 

[SS4]

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is that you can run windows on top of linux using a virtualiser such as vmware player (available free). It won't run too much slower either In fact windows 2003 server runs faster than vista runs natively!

That's hardly surprising. Servers are a stripped down OS and many don't even have a GUI by default which would make it a lot faster.

That being said I find ubuntu too bloated

 

[Nick W]

That's hardly surprising. Servers are a stripped down OS and many don't even have a GUI by default which would make it a lot faster.

That being said I find ubuntu too bloated

I doubt windows 2003 server has anything stripped down apart from xp's theme. I don't think you can disable the gui either. There's a reason why linux admins cost more than Windows admins . I'm simply using it as students can get it for free (along with lots of development tools).

 

[SS4]

I doubt windows 2003 server has anything stripped down apart from xp's theme. I don't think you can disable the gui either. There's a reason why linux admins cost more than Windows admins . I'm simply using it as students can get it for free (along with lots of development tools).

It started off as windows servers but became linux ones xD. It's really an unfair comparison against vista as it's hugeeeee.

I used MSDN myself in my student days xD

 

[Nick W]

It started off as windows servers but became linux ones xD. It's really an unfair comparison against vista as it's hugeeeee.

Fair point, but then for linux on linux I'd use a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine and have almost almost no performance loss.