0
I'm guessing that, like a lot of us here, when family or friends that aren't enthusiasts have 'issues' we're the ones they call.
If so, I'll bet lots of of us here have been inundated lately with calls that our familes' and friends' PC's have been infected by Xion or their ilk. My best guess is new fbook apps. but I'm not sure.
My GF's Windows Media Edition machine (yeah, I know) got to the point that instead of basic malware a rootkit had run its course and disabled every piece of hardware she had. Fully admit to not being a pro but I'd never seen anything like it. The kit disabled every device on her mobo (NIC, USB ports, DVD-drive, Firewire, floppy) and disabled and/or corrupted the drivers for add-ons like her soundcard, and g-card. When I booted it into Safe Mode and checked the Device Manager EVERY SINGLE device had the dreaded yellow question mark. I've, personally, never seen that. I was put-off a bit by her "storage device" entry having a yellow ? mark even though I could boot it but, whatever....
I plugged her SATA drive into my main box, booted to 7, copied her music and movies and documents to my data partition, and then ran a scan on her (only) hard drive and my data partition. Used Malwarebytes, Kaspersky Online, and Spybot and Avast. They all found a bunch of shite. After, I booted to ubuntu and used gparted on her drive to wipe it out.
Ended up installing 7 on her drive, partitioning it, and restoring her data. This was a good month or so ago and she's still up and running.
tl;dr I didn't use AVG cause it's junk but Avast, Malwarebytes, Kaspersky Online, and Spybot, along with a low-level format and re-installation of her OS, fixed the problem(s).
on edit--I use Avast on my 7 installation and have had zero problems. I have a router but don't use softwalls nor do I run anti-malware proggies on the regular. Avast ftw, imho.
Edited by banj0, 16 February 2010 - 06:54 AM.
