Worst Virus I've Ever Had

I've been using computers for 15 years and have never gotten a virus. It's very easy not to get one, you just have to be careful

I don't even use AV software

Yes

a few years back there was a virus embedded into a game software package that literally wiped my drive, Trying to remember I think it was the first Warcraft game????

I've never installed a Mac OS, but.. at worst you could download any linux distrobution and format the drive with that.

If you have a 3.5" drive, you can download any dos boot disks and use fdisk to format it... or download a copy of XP and use your original serial for it. They're floating all over the place.

...then how do you know you have never had a virus/trojan? ...ome trojans aren't there to cause total destruction...Some are made to abuse your internet bandwith, while others are data miners that sit quietly in the background collecting valuable information. ...for the record I've only had 1 virus & that was given to me by a friend on a 5 1/4 floppy (if that gives you any idea how long ago that was) who wanted me to recover some data for him.

I had a similiar virus attack yesterday including the Tagasaurus icon being loaded on my desktop. For me the attack started when I ran Bitcomet. I pulled the power after the computer was frozen for one minute. I was able to reboot in safemode and determined my system was being hijacked. Prevx seems to be cleaning my system of a dozen different malware that was loaded. The attack was surprising because it didn't require me to click a dialog box or execute some software to start it. It sounds like you want to react fast (powerdown) to this attack before it does too much damage.

I have never heard of this specific virus before, but there are viruses that take advantage of holes in windows that were in older versions but have since been fixed. There are zombie computers throughout the net looking for these unpatched computers, and the holes literally allow someone from over the net to connect to your computer and start installing things.

So, it was nothing you have done. A zombie pinged the hole while your computer was running (and yes, there are so many zombies that everyone on the net receives many exploit attempt packets per minute, however modern firewalls just block it out. The security "guru" Steve Gibson has called these packets 'internet noise'.) and by pinging this hole before you had updated your computer at windowsupdate.com, it was able to take advantage of the holes. And no, new computers generally do not come with the newest patched windows. I believe Dells come with a version of windows from 2005, if i am not mistaken. There have been probably near 100 fixes since then, maybe more I'm not sure...

As soon as you receive your new Dell computer, do NOT plug it into your internet and turn it on. Leave the ethernet port unplugged at first, while you turn it on and set it up. Make sure you have a NAT router; that will filter out the "internet noise" and probably keep these viruses from reaching your computer in the first place. Get an Internet Explorer ready to go to www.windowsupdate.com, and then plug the laptop into your NAT router and go, and get all the updates as quick as you possibly can.

Now that your laptop is updated, these exploit packets won't affect your computer, and it is "safe" to plug your computer into an unprotected internet source (although I still don't recommend it, because there is still the possibility of attack).

And might I recommend using Firefox for surfing, and ZoneAlarm Security Suite for firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam? (no I am in no way affiliated with these products, but I use them myself and I have had no cases of spyware or viruses)

Yes, although I'm also very careful... I've had a total of 2 "drive-by" viruses infect my systems. Since I image with Ghost every week or 2, it wasn't a problem. Image with Ghost or Acronis during and after your clean installs, and you can quickly and easily recover from an attack.

OP, I'd suggest you "nuke" you HDD with dban and then reinstall XP.
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Don't forget to ghost it this time.

Wow, three anti-crap programs... I'm just going to rely on my router to do the bad packet blocking... I'm going to be getting my new e1705 in a couple weeks, so I'll wipe it with my re-installation disc that i paid an extra $8 for, and then i'll start it up connected to my router and update windows. If the re-installation disc installed the Dell crap software (which I hope not) then I'll use PC De-Crapifier (google it) to take that off, and then install my other favorite stuff... firefox, zonealarm, gaim (IM program), utorrent, actual window manager (just google it, it's very cool), and a hosts file that blocks pretty much every internet spyware attack site... Then my other programs - development tools, games, whatever.

Yup, it will be fun. I can't wait, my e1705 will be POWERFUL Gonna go out and buy all the newest games that I can't currently play, like... Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, maybe even World of Warcraft... I've heard of F.E.A.R and Oblivion and BF2, not sure exactly the gameplay of them but I might go buy them too. I'll go game-happy with this new laptop lol.

I got hit with something nasty too before and had to reload software, it does indeed suck big time.

Great tips in this thread. I use a router with hardware firewall and go straight to macAfee to re-download security centre for the software firewall.

Odious has a great suggestion, I do the same but use acronis true image, and take a backup to a partition in my 2nd hard disk. Then its always there. I have 2, a "fresh install/setup" and a weekly one which gets overwritten.

Doc caliban had some software to continuously backup documents folder but I forget what that was, I manually copy the folder over to the other drive regularly too.

(the new update to macafee security centre is very good; didnt like it at first as I was used to the old interface, but like the spyware/system guard and script automatic functions)

As an aside, the mac software is awesome in comparison, dont have the same security woes (yet anyway)

did you see the new macvidia installer?, seems to work automatically on all dell nvidia videocards

cheers

Two firewalls !> one.

If you need more than one firewall you need to see somone about that paranoia complex lol... I use Zone alarm Security Suite, It's all-inclusive. Once a month I use Ad-Aware to clean up anything that was missed & have never run into issues.

I used Norton for AV & ZA for firewall but Norton became a different animal over the last few years & I found myself more & more un-impressed by their product...Mcaffe is just a monster...My friend had that thing installed I swear it had 15 different procs running just by itself...It was nuts. There are a lot of decent "freebie" programs out there but for real security go buy a product like ZA...you just spent $$$$ on a computer might as well protect it with a fraction of that investment cost, right?

I know I don't have a virus because I know I'm smart enough not to get one.

And I keep an eye on my network traffic so if it's ever being used without my intention I'll know something's up. There really is no other way I could get a virus than someone hacking into my WPA encrypted wireless router and getting on the network.

I totally agreed on this. I got the 15 months McAfee Security package with my M1210 & thought that despite all the horrible stuff I heard about it, I should at least give it a chance. Man, was I wrong! Once I activated it (finished installing & updating everything), my system literally froze! I checked my processes & it showed my CPU running at 100%!!! It just never went down even after 20-30 mins! I can't do anything basically & it sure brings back the good old days of Pentium 2 Windows 95 days!!! Wonder whether anyone experienced it & maybe have a way to make it not that resource hog.

I salute you for being so brave but you may want to note that stuff can/may be embedded in the stuff/access you download/upload, thus making just monitoring the network yourself not totally being able to "catch" all those evil processes/viruses.

That has nothing to do with being brave. I agree with Blahmann that it is perfectly possible to keep an XP box clean without using any of those popular anti-this or anti-that packages at all. It does take a certain amount of competence, however, and a well thought-out configuration of the machine.

Nevertheless, I would say that the majority of Windows users will be better off using some sort of anti-virus protection, and maybe even some anti-spyware product. Third-party firewalls, on the other hand, are highly overrated, at least as security tools. None of these offer any significant security benefits over Windows' built-in firewall.

I wouldn't say that some are not competent. I've gotten several virii... all by myself.

The latest was from a popular (serials) site. I downloaded the keygen, fully knowing that it was a virus but I hoped for god's sake that it wasn't because I needed the program.

I double clicked and bingo... dos opened and window disappeared.... then I went on the four hour escapade to get rid of it.