Search
Hot Deals|Free Stuff|Finance|Topic Alerts|Today|Forum Search

Forums › Technology
  • Page :
  • 1
  • Text Only
posted: Oct. 14, 2009 @ 2:28p

Vista / Opera 8.53 - Not using IE at all.

update- see more at end
It appears that IE starts when I start Opera. Some Windows program limits
the display of the IE page. That's good but the starting of IE when I start
Opera is disturbing. That is new as of last week.
Below is my first post on this problem.
-
I've run malwarebytes and avast and fixed a few problems which I knew I had. I've rebooted
and run them again and often just to be sure.

I'm getting new behavior of my computer this week and I figure that some setting has been
altered.

What I need to figure out is which setting and where.

The effect are these.

1. Opera Browser is set to open new pages in tabs rather than new instances of the browser. It
blocks popups but what's happened lately is new instances of Opera open with ads on them.

2. Internet Explorer is opening or trying to open. It's blocked sometimes by a routine in Windows
to protect from this. But I've never had IE open by itself in the past.

I don't use IE at all. I did reset the mfg settings after I had an infection because I could not
connect to the internet. Resetting to mfg defaults allowed me to connect.

When I first got Vista I did some reading and set one or two settings in IE to make it safer.

3. I just came to Fatwallet to post this and had only opened Opera and come directly here.
A new occurance of Opera opened and had an indication that the page was not allowed to
run ActiveX - I have it turned off - - That means the page had an activex routine on it.
Why coming to Fatwallet could that spawn a new instance of Opera?

I'm a bit miffed.

 

So if you can guess why I'm getting 1 and 2 happening I'd appreciate it when previous to last
week they were runnning fine.

Thanks

I'll keep up with this thread if anyone is interested in how it turns out.

Just post a note and if there's activity I'll keep it updated.

Andre

Update 2
Edit 2- Just as I finishing writing this note I found my system shutting down and
restarting. Figuring a virus had done it I booted into safe mode and am
runing malwarebytes. It found 13 infections in 4 minutes so far.

something that allows IE to open and Opera to open is bringing in something
which causes infection. I don't know what changed on my system about a week
ago. I've got it beaten down but I would truly like to set my system to what it
was a week ago.

I don't have a reset point. - I'm using a drive small enough that does not allow
a reset point with the amount of data that is on it.

And it's not been a problem for 2 years. Please realize that everything has been
OK for 2 years or more and I've not had an infection since Win95.

This is bit new to me but I do understand how it works only not what exactly is
happening that allows Opera to open new instances.

Someone surely knows. I'm still searching online too.
posted: Oct. 14, 2009 @ 2:28p

posted: Oct. 14, 2009 @ 2:31p

You are still infected.

What security precautions / tools were you running prior to the infection
posted: Oct. 15, 2009 @ 12:11p

It's a classic infection sign. The people who write malware take the easy road and go after the 90% solution. They work on the assumption you are using IE by default, and the prgram calls up IE to do whatever the malware is configured to do. It's not a 100% guarantee this is what's happening, but it points that way.

Running the scan from Safe Mode is still iffy at best. By the time Windows boots up, the malware can already have done a ton of things, including modifying the scanning software. Use a bootable disc to boot directly into a scanner that's independant of Windows or pull the drive and scan it using another system.
posted: Oct. 15, 2009 @ 1:28p

First thing to do is to backup your data
posted: Oct. 30, 2009 @ 1:34p

I appreciate the replies and did fix the problem after doing tons of reading.

The infection was probably in my cache files in the Opera 8.54 browser.

MAlwarebytes had found infections there before so I figured it
would find them all but it might not have. Obviously I was being reinfected when not even online.
That's what gave me a clue that the files were still on the computer.
I ran other virus scanners but none found any infections. Those were
Housecall 7.x (beta) and Another one I can't recall.

They did not find anything even when I was infected. So I gave up on them. Malwarebytes did find infections
when I was infected but it took another program to really fix the problem.

I found some advice where a person had a similar reinfection problem and used ATF Cleaner which
deletes cache and Windows Temp files. I used it in the 'everything' mode.

Then, I ran that and Malwarebytes in normal boot and the infection stopped.

It appeared that ATF Cleaner deleted a file in either my Opera Cache or IE Cache or Windows Temp files
which Malwarebytes did not find.

I could be wrong about how the problem was fixed. All I know is that the reinfection occured about 10 times
after Malwarebytes scanned everything in both Safe Mode and Normal boot.

So here's what I did
Ran Malwarebytes in Safe Mode with Network access. (made sure my Malwarebytes database was up to date)
I got ATFCleaner and ran it to delete all the cache and temp files and I ran Malwarebytes again
and rebooted.

 


It's been 3 weeks and I've not seen a reinfection.

So I figure ATF Cleaner must have gotten rid of something that Malwarebytes couldn't see.

ATF Cleaner can be found here.

http://www.atribune.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&i...


Be sure to update Malwarebytes before you use it. They update the databse at least a couple of times
a day from what I've seen.


Andre
posted: Oct. 30, 2009 @ 1:41p

drodge said: It's a classic infection sign. The people who write malware take the easy road and go after the 90% solution. They work on the assumption you are using IE by default, and the prgram calls up IE to do whatever the malware is configured to do. It's not a 100% guarantee this is what's happening, but it points that way.

Running the scan from Safe Mode is still iffy at best. By the time Windows boots up, the malware can already have done a ton of things, including modifying the scanning software. Use a bootable disc to boot directly into a scanner that's independant of Windows or pull the drive and scan it using another system.

You mentioned a scanner than can run from a boot disk. I can boot from CD but have no floppy drive.
Do you recommend a scanner that can run from a bootup on a CD ?

I looked but did not find as many as I thought might be out there.

None really looked right or good to me. They all seemed to offer help with a catch of some kind so I
figured scanning from a boot device isn't normally done with WinXP or Vista

I haven't had an infection since 1992 so while I understand how infections work and what they
do I haven't had (THANK GOD) much practice at fixing them.


My secret is to not use IE and use Opera 8.x or 9.x and avoid porn sites and hacker sites.

I think my new secret is to run the ATF Cleaner after using my browser.


Disclaimer: By providing links to other sites, FatWallet.com does not guarantee, approve or endorse the information or products available at these sites, nor does a link indicate any association with or endorsement by the linked site to FatWallet.com.


While FatWallet makes every effort to post correct information, offers are subject to change without notice.
Some exclusions may apply based upon merchant policies.
© 1999-2012