Nasty Viruses Going Around…

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve heard about some nasty computer viruses that have been popping up on people’s systems. These are the normal “run some anti-virus software” type of infections; they are the “boot into safe-mode or nuke your hard drive” type.

So what can you do to prevent these types of things? What steps can you initially take to try to clean up the mess? We’ll cover that plus I’ll give you my contact info and you can let me deal with the headache of removal.

Preventative measures

There are a couple of things you can do to prevent these sort of things from happening: some are easy, commonsense, others are fairly drastic. And they are by no means comprehensive.

1. Go to sites that you trust – Everyone has heard of cnn.com, youtube.com, and facebook.com. If you haven’t been there before, please ask around to your friends or do a Google search to see what a site is. Just like you shouldn’t just go perusing around a foreign country without researching first and knowing the local terrain and cultures, neither should you visit a website without know what is in store first.
2. Avoid “free” on the ‘net – Trust me, I can show you some incredible free software such as GIMP, Mozilla Firefox, and Open Office, but putting the word “free” in a Google search should not be allowed. If you type in a search for ‘free ipod’ in Google, there is a 100% chance that you are ending up with a virus on your computer if you click all the links on the first page. If you want to find virus-free apps, start from a trusted source such as Download.com or Lifehacker. Lifehacker has a great feature called Hive Five which highlights the best programs in a number of different categories. You can also ask me for recommendations.
3. Install Linux or use a Linux LiveCD – This is a bit more involved that the first two and I’m not going to get into installing Linux on this post, but downloading an ISO file from Ubuntu and burning it to a CD is simple. Once you’ve downloaded and burned it to a CD, you can simply restart your computer with the CD in the drive and it will run Linux without changing anything about your Windows setup. Since it runs on a CD, no viruses infect the CD.

If you catch the bug

If you happen to notice strange things happening on your computer such as pop-ups saying “Your anti-virus is out-dated. Please enter credit card information blah, blah, blah” you definitely have a virus and you should definitely not enter any information. Instead, follow these instructions:

1. Shutdown your computer.
2. When the computer first turns on, start pressing the F8 key repeatedly before Windows ever starts. It should end up at a black and white screen that has an option labeled ‘Safe Mode with Networking.’
3. Select Safe Mode with Networking. It should then start up Windows. It may look funny. You can see in the screenshot that things are blurry. This is because minimal drivers are loaded. Your regular video driver is one that isn’t loaded.
   
4. Once you are in windows and connected to the internet, head over the the MalwareBytes Anti-Malware site and download the latest version. A very typical set up will ensue.
5. Update and run MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. Whatever it detects, remove it. If you want a more in depth look at MalwareBytes, I may cover it in more depth soon.
6. Restart your computer.

And what if that doesn’t work?

More drastic measures, including erasing EVERYTHING and starting from scratch, maybe in your future. In this case, you need to be sure you have all your documents and spreadsheets backed up in Dropbox and all your larger files backed up in Google Docs. Any files too large for Google Docs such as movies and Linux LiveCD images should be held on an external hard drive or a USB thumbdrive.

This has really just been a very light overview of things to watch out for. If you find your computer is slowing down and pop-ups are occurring, just remember that it isn’t a normal thing and if caught quickly may be easily remedied.

If you need help with keeping your computer running in tip-top shape, you should fill out the contact form below or use the Google Voice widget to contact me and set up a time we can meet to discuss your computer issues.

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