ESET NOD32 IT WORK OKEY

Just a quick thought to add to ScottW's notes before you cause any further (if you have any at all right now) damage to your computer. These pop-ups that you are getting, ALWAYS close them by clicking on the red "X" in the upper right hand corner of their perspective windows. Some viruses will include a "close window" button within the pop-up itself, ( or some such phrasing such as "ignore", or "try later") as an alternate to the "install now", or "purchase now" button. These will actually cause further damage to your machine.

Hey harpeter.

It is a pretty common scam nowadays for these pop-ups to show up and display that you have all manner of bad stuff and then tell you that the only way you can remove it is by buying their stuff . . . it's appropriately called "scrareware".

You likely got this from Limewire. I'm not suggesting necessarily that you don't download music from Limewire, but it's a hotbed for malware so if you're going to use it, make sure your virus protection is up to date and run an on demand scan after you download any music from there.

Now before Limewire fans jump all over me and protest that "I've been using Limewire ever since it came out and I've never gotten an infection", I agree. There's plenty of people who have never gotten bad stuff from Limewire. But there's plenty that have too . . . so just be extra safe if you choose to go there.

Whenever a pop up presents a link for a download, DO NOT click on it, no matter how badly some may say your computer is infected. If you're scared that it may be infected, run an on demand scan with the LEGITIMATE antivirus software that you have on your machine already.

One of the particularly popular scams lately is a pop up that will scare you by telling you that you have 100's of registry errors, and the only way to "clean" them is to click on their "Registry Cleaner" link. I recently saw one that claimed the user had over a thousand registry "errors". If you had that many registry errors and they were serious (which the scam implies, if not outright saying so), then your machine wouldn't even be running.

Before Rick jumps in here and corrects me, I'm not saying that you can't have 1000 registry . . . trivial defects. But they are not serious errors that will cause your machine to malfunction. They are things like links pointing to non-existent help files or missing desktop icons, which is pretty trivial.

Finally, these scams will actually give you more infections if you download them, NOT remove infections. Plus, if you buy that crap then the scammers will likely have enough of your personal information to steal your identity or make fraudulent credit card charges.

In fact, whereas infections used to be something that bored malware writers used to do just for "kicks", infections nowadays are written with an eye toward getting enough of your personal information so that these scoundrels can steal your identity. It's big business now.

So don't ever click on a download link in a pop up . . . nor should you click on links in emails or IM's. More than one person has been infected by clicking on a link in an IM that says something like "Click on this link to see a cool pic."

harpeter, to get into Safe Mode, you tap the F8 key while the system is booting up. Start hitting F8 when you see the manufacturer's splash screen or BIOS output. If you see "Starting Windows", you have missed it. When done correctly, you will see a plain text screen with the Advanced Boot Options menu. From this you can choose "Safe Mode". This is a good step to try, since the system might work better in Safe Mode.

If you can get into Safe Mode, you could try a System Restore operation to roll back the system to before the problem. If that's not an option you could try running AntiVir and use it to restore all of the files that it has quarantined. Finally, if it comes down to using the Feb 15 backup, you could copy your bookmarks and e-mail addresses off before the restore.

Hello, well every advice you've been getting is right, it's weird that safe mode doesnt work that well. Anyhow, should you need to format your machine you may be able to do it if your provider (I understand it's Dell in this case) made a "partition"*.

Usually a (D:) will appear when you go into "My Computer" and possibly show as "FACTORY_IMAGE" or some similar (althought make sure you only have one hard drive since "D" could appear if you have two hard drives). If you happen to have this partition then:
1. Turn off your computer
2. Disconnect all peripherals (being printer, webcams, flash drives, etc),
3. After you've done this turn on your computer and inmmediatly as you turn it on you'll get to your provider's splash screen (where there is the logo of Dell in this case and instructions on the lower part such as " F12 Boot Preferences")
4.Press whatever [F] button your system calls for, it should say "Recovery Partition", "Recovery Image" "Windows Recovery" or similar, in my case it is the [F11] key and there you can follow the instructions to recover your computer and leave it the way it came from the factory the day you bought it.
Notice all your personal files will be lost (the program will warn you of this at some point) and past doing this you can't roll back to restore points since, as I said, it formats your computer and leaves it working the way it was when you first bought it. It may take from several minutes to several hours.
DON'T TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER WHILE IN THE PROCESS (sorry for using full caps but this is really important since you can't tell what kind of damage you can make.)

If you notice your computer freezes wait a long time (a really long time, like 4 hours or so) before you hit the off button since some procedures really take a while. The good thing if you have this recovery partition is that you wont need to fetch drivers from all over internet and install them yourself but I highly recommend going for a windows update in order to do have your computer and thus drivers, updated.

First things to do after you've recovered:
1.Set up the internet.
2.Download Windows Updates.
3.Install antivirus
4.Turn off, reconect al peripherals and install them.
5.Install programs you use.

You can get more accurate information from your provider's troubleshooting and manteinance guide or similar documents that came with your computer.

I hope you can solve your problems so you don't have to go through this process.

__________________________________
*From Wikipedia: "Disk partitioning is the act or practice of dividing the storage space of a hard disk drive into separate data areas known as partitions. A partition editor program can be used to create, delete or modify these partitions. Once a disk is divided into several partitions, directories and files of different categories may be stored in different partitions. More partitions provide more control but too many may become cumbersome. The way space management, access permissions and directory searching are implemented depends upon the type of file system installed on a partition."

@harpeter, if you're still checking in, I would as ScottW suggested much earlier still download, and install the SUPERAnti-Spyware, and the Malwarebytes-AntiMalware, just for good measure. These are both VERY useful tools in addition to your anti-virus protection that you're using. I use several others as well, (but some of my friends would put me a little on the side of paranoid, lol) but these two if ran seperately once a week or so, will help keep the nasties to a minimum, and can help stop something before it gets too big.

If you found 10 viruses and were able to save your machine as easily as it seems you did, I'd go out and buy myself a lottery ticket, lol. It seems you have certainly got some great luck on your side.

harpeter, the AV software from free-av.com is Avira AntiVir Personal, which is quite popular these days and there are several members on this forum who use it.

You can run virus checkers from a CD. When a system is so infected that Windows won't start, or won't function, you can boot from a CD and run AV software to remove the infection. This is a good disaster recovery procedure, but not as good as restoring from a current, uninfected backup! You should make yourself a UBCD4win disc. It boots into a slimmed down XP environment where you can run most Windows programs.

You should only have one anti-virus or anti-spyware program running at all times. The real-time or "online" scan usually examines all files that are accessed as they are loaded. This slows down the loading time a little bit, so having more than one is a performance drag. You can have as many offline scanners as you wish.

harpeter, I had meant to make the words "UBCD4win disc" a hotlink in the above post. That website has all of the files and instructions to build your own bootable CD. In addition, The Geek has an article about it:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....covery-cd/

I recently did a UBCD4win myself, and you may get some tips, especially on what NOT to do, here. Scroll about two thirds down in that thread, and you'll be able to cut to the chase.

Looking back on it, the effort was actually easy if I had not gotten sidetracked on slipstreaming.