My laptop is totally messed up! Is there anyway to save it?

Question

I got some kind of virus or bug or whatever on my laptop (I'm never gonna try to download p**n again!!) and now it keeps trying to get on Internet Explorer on it's own and I can't even find My documents or My computer or anything like that!!

what can i do to fix this?!! i was gonna try to purchase a virus protector on my desktop and transfer it to my laptop with a usb cable but my husband thinks it might not work.

I really don't want to spend more money then I need to, but I don't know if I have a choice, can my laptop even be saved??

Answer 1

You are now the proud owner of a zombie computer. Good thing you have disconnected Internet access or the p**n site would be using it as a server now. Their programmers must be poor, though. The trojan shouldn't have made such radical changes.

The best thing you can do now is format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. If you have a restore disk, use it. If not, buy an install disk.

Answer 2

Give the anti virus a try, let it do it's job. If anything persists you'll need to find out what virus it is, and find instructions to manually remove it.

The anti-virus should identify your virus.

Off topic: Why were you downloading porno?

Answer 3

http://www.castlecops.com

There are volunteers there who will help you.

Do as they tell you, and remember to thank them.

Some people don't get help there and it's because they won't listen to the experts!

Answer 4

How much you can save and fix really depend on how bad it is now, can you access internet ? what protection currently installed , what version of Windows...etc etc.  

Answer 5

Try a system restore...  First try the simple one of restoring to an earlier date.. Go to start>all programs>accessories> system tools> system restore and choose an earlier date that you know you pc was working....

if that doesnt work, you can completely restore it to factory settings using the recovery disk that came with it.  Simply insert the disk and boot up.. follow on screen directions.  If your laptop didnt come with a disk, then its possible it has a built in recovery partition on the hard drive.  My Dell laptop does.. you hit Ctrl + F11 at start up and follow the onscreen directions...

If this works, which it should, be sure to install antivirus protection!

Answer 6

I hope you learned your lesson. This is what happens when you download p**n. Not worth it.

Anyways dear, try doing a system restore. start

all programs

accessories

system tools

restore

And restore it to about a week prior

If all else fails, sounds to me like you're probably going to have to crash it and restart from scratch, that is; if you have the disk that the laptop came with.

If it wont let you access the comp itself open it up in safe mode with networking, download an anti-virius, and run that.

Answer 7

Let me get this right: You used the net and downloaded something without having either a firewall or anti-virus? I'm speechless!

You'll have to start up in safe mode and run a virus scan. Download Avast (either from your connection or someone else's) and install it. Then run a scan.

edit - System restore is indeed an option, but sometimes has a habit of not eliminating malware. If it fails, run that scan.

Answer 8

Don't do a System Restore this will only infect an earlier version of your installation. Your only solution is to install an Anti virus program, run it, clear your Temp folders, Temp Internet Folders, Cookies Folder and switch off system restore as the virus is most likely in all of them. Allowing System restore to remain on will allow the virus back onto your machine everytime you reboot after doing the virus scan. Download spynomore from here http://www.spynomore.com/ and run it, it will list all the places your machine is infected, there may be several hundred entries so it may take a while to clean it!

Run spynomore, run a seperate AV program (try AVG free at http://free.avg.com/) and allow it to remove what it can, then run spynomore again and see how much is left, manually remove anything the AV program was not designed to delete, reboot & rescan as many times as it takes to get your laptop virus free. It has to be said surfing the Net without AV protection these days is almost suicidal, p**n sites are more infected than most but you can get drive-by downloads from the most respectable looking websites.