Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
If I can fix it, anyone can
Far be it from me to call myself computer savvy, but I weathered a malware attack yesterday, resisted the urge to reinstall Windows XP, and managed to rid my computer of its nasty disease.
It all began during a search for Ipswich clams. These are the delicious little bastards that are damned near impossible to find on the west coast. One of the top links on a Google search is Digger’s Choice Seafood; the moment I clicked on the link, a Flash Player video kicked off, and even though I exed out pronto, the damage was done. Half of my desktop icons disappeared along with most of my C drive files, and I began getting error messages warning me of a “Critical Error, RAM memory usage is critically high, RAM memory failure,” and, “The system has detected a problem with one or more installed IDE / SATA hard disks.”
Odd thing was, I could still surf the net and even kinda sorta play games, except the computer kept booting me out of the games with every pop-up error message. The computer also claimed that McAfee had detected and eradicated a Trojan, and when I ran the McAfee scan, it didn’t find any threats. This was after updating McAfee, btw.
Which says something about McAfee, methinks.
The odd thing is, this particular malware is supposed to insist that I need to buy some software NOW NOW NOW! to eradicate the virus from my hard drive, and it’s all a scam to get my credit card information. But no such scam materialized. So I think McAfee must have partially disabled the malware, though not well enough to fix the system. Fortunately, I recalled that I had done good things in the past by searching for my error message word for word, and that’s what saved me this time.
I found my particular problem discussed and solved on bleepingcomputer.com, a site dedicated to just such issues (and they have a nice write-up on Wikipedia, so I figure they have to be legit). I had been infected with something called System Defragmenter. Bleeping Computer gave me step by step instructions that successfully kicked System Defragmenter’s ass in no time.
And soon enough I was back playing Dragon Age 2, in one night managing to bed my pirate wench and a possessed mage (who told me he loved me, isn’t that sweet?), and freeing my zombified mother from her mortal coil.
Don’t say I never done nothing for ya, Ma.
D.
It sounds like you got hit with Antimalware Doctor, or whatever it is calling itself now. I got it on my laptop (only on one account, though, which wasn’t mine) and I used Antimalware Bytes to get rid of it.
The lesson, I think, is to hover and inspect link info before you click.
Or maybe it’s just never to do anything, any time.
Okay, I’ll hover over it. And
I’m using my laptop with better antivirus software. Let’s see what happens . . .
Nothing. Nada. Perhaps the web site isn’t corrupted? I really don’t want to check it to see.