My Acer 8204

[raybond]

I bought mine in february 2006 at singapore. great laptop! great monitor, and the speed is powerful. got this notebook at the price of Sin$3998, i guess that what every shops is selling down there. everything is fine, till last week.
actually, i have been having a problem with my laptop for the past weeks. it mysteriously obtained a virus...kind of a smart virus. and my advice right now for readers is to make sure all your pc or whatsover to have an active anti virus with updated virus database and make sure it is running right now. anyway this smart virus, kind of detects the word 'anti virus' or 'antivirus' or anything of some sort. i tried to search at google for a decent anti virus, and it closed the browser...no kidding! it just did!!!

i tried to run in safe mode, tried to install my avg anti virus, but still...it mingled with the installation, and somehow killed it. tried the stand alone program from mcaffee, and it killed them all! what a menace.

i ran msconfig, and it closed down everything. tried a ctrl+alt+del, and it just killed it!

and...finally, i backed up all my important data to a usb flash disk, and hoping to end everything with a clean install. restart the system, and press what i believe to be 'alt+f10' and hoping to end everything. take in mind that i have done this erestoration before and i believe this is a great tool. but...alt+f10 is not working! after several tweaking at the BIOS, none seems to help. so i think...this is someking of a BIOS 'problem' and it need to be updated. so to cut things short, i just got the winphlash and updated BIOS for my 8204 at acer.com and do the magic. alas!!! the virus killed winphlash at sectors 12 of 14. and this is where all hell broke loose!

first the keyboard went dead...then the mouse. then...i can't get the notebook to stop running. power button didn't work! i have to unplug the adaptor, and then the batteries. and after that...the notebook is basically brain dead! pressing the power button just meant to light the button up and nothing else.

so, i just send my notebook for repairs...and of course not telling everything, cause i have heard several cases of a BIOS update that gone wrong, and somehow warranty doesn't cover it.

and i will post the update the moment i got back from acer. :-)

[137]

I bought mine in february 2006 at singapore. great laptop! great monitor, and the speed is powerful. got this notebook at the price of Sin$3998, i guess that what every shops is selling down there. everything is fine, till last week.
actually, i have been having a problem with my laptop for the past weeks. it mysteriously obtained a virus...kind of a smart virus. and my advice right now for readers is to make sure all your pc or whatsover to have an active anti virus with updated virus database and make sure it is running right now. anyway this smart virus, kind of detects the word 'anti virus' or 'antivirus' or anything of some sort. i tried to search at google for a decent anti virus, and it closed the browser...no kidding! it just did!!!

i tried to run in safe mode, tried to install my avg anti virus, but still...it mingled with the installation, and somehow killed it. tried the stand alone program from mcaffee, and it killed them all! what a menace.

i ran msconfig, and it closed down everything. tried a ctrl+alt+del, and it just killed it!

and...finally, i backed up all my important data to a usb flash disk, and hoping to end everything with a clean install. restart the system, and press what i believe to be 'alt+f10' and hoping to end everything. take in mind that i have done this erestoration before and i believe this is a great tool. but...alt+f10 is not working! after several tweaking at the BIOS, none seems to help. so i think...this is someking of a BIOS 'problem' and it need to be updated. so to cut things short, i just got the winphlash and updated BIOS for my 8204 at acer.com and do the magic. alas!!! the virus killed winphlash at sectors 12 of 14. and this is where all hell broke loose!

first the keyboard went dead...then the mouse. then...i can't get the notebook to stop running. power button didn't work! i have to unplug the adaptor, and then the batteries. and after that...the notebook is basically brain dead! pressing the power button just meant to light the button up and nothing else.

so, i just send my notebook for repairs...and of course not telling everything, cause i have heard several cases of a BIOS update that gone wrong, and somehow warranty doesn't cover it.

and i will post the update the moment i got back from acer. :-)

Well, good luck man!!

[kohaar]

Wow. Thats just bad luck! Hope everything turns out well

[raybond]

i have just received a call from acer, and they said that my notebook is ready for pickup, and it's free...warranty. :-)
what a relief, man.

cheers to acer. :-)

raymond

[Wiz33]

Yea, there are some nasty Trojon running around that will even knock out an installed anit-virus program. I just had this on my desktop and it killed Norton, it also killed activeX on IE so you could not run the online AV scan from most provider. I finally got around it by going to Trend Micro as they have 2 method to run an online AV scan. One uses activeX and one uses Java. Although the virus have kill Java runtime. I was able ot download Java runtime from Sun Micro and install it manually and that got the AV scan to work and it detected a few trojons and took care of them.

[raybond]

just an update, i got my notebook today from acer. the cost of repairing for the damage bios is free, and according to acer, they have to replace my motherboard. :-)
so happily, i turned it on, and alas, my log on information is still available...which means...they only do my bios repair and not formatted my hard drive. hm...
i log on and can still feel the nasty virus emerging.
damn! still got work to do.
and did i mention that alt+f10 doesn't work on my 8204?

guess i am spending my saturday night working on my notebook, then.

[CoolHotCold]

best i can say check D2D in the bios is enabled.

[bluntspoon]

Sorry bout da bad luck raybond!!
I once had a similar problem with my desktop.
It was resolved with a bios flash....

[raybond]

here's an update:
i have figured out and resolved the virus situation.
the virus is identified as: RONTOKBR-AC.
Very dangerous, annoying, and it simply killes your MSCONFIG, TASKMANAGER, and anything related to AV!!!
So searching with google lead me to solutions on how to handle this virus.
You will need the following tools, and thankfully, they are free. :-)
1. CCLEANER
2. SYSCLEAN from TREND MICRO, please note, u also need the LATEST PATTERN FILES!!!
3. AVG ANTI VIRUS

On normal boot, run sysclean, read the intructions how to utilies this.
then wait until it figures out the rontokbr virus.
you will be safe for now.
run the avg av installation, then run the application, and UPDATE it to its latest definations!
please note that you may not being able to do the installation, let alone the app if you have not run sysclean!
now, you will have 2 av running the search.
on my notebook, avg will do a faster search, identified the virus, the files affected, and will take immediate solutions. i think this virus is not so harmful, though. :-)
after the 2 av finished, closed the search, and install CCLEANER, and clean everything possible.
then boot to safe mode, and run avg or sysclean, anyone will do.
please also have your other hard drive scanned well, this includes removable hard-disk and usb flash disk(i have my usb infected!!!)
and voila! virus cleaned. i think...

for erecovery, i think i will stick to burning the image to dvd. flashing the bios...has made me some sort of traumatic, please refer to my bad experience on my previous post.

hope this is usefull.

cheers,

ray