Geek Help

[fictional]

Hi! As if this week wasn't fucked enough (insurance people think I don't exist! Medical assistants are rude and classist! there's FAKE GRAVITY pulling me in weird directions! I HAVE TWO PAPERS DUE and apparently I need an MRI...) - I seem to have picked up a weird Trojan! I know, I know, those filthy corners of the internet that you have to frequent in order to get the skinny on Satan...

So, I ask for assistance, Oh Ye Mighty Powers of Flist!

When I open IE, I get infinite amounts of popups; at first they were for porn; they have now devolved into ebay ads, verizon ads etc. Then the browser closes by itself for no reason. I have installed IE 7; this did nothing to help. I'm using Firefox now, which seems free of the popups, still has the occasional popup though with much less frequency, but I am concerned about infection in the innards of the machine.

Thoughts? Advice? I am poor and un-techsavvy, and would much appreciate any pearls of wisdom you lot might have to offer...

ETA: Thanks so much to anyone who offered help & advice, especially visitors from rm's flist. New Problem: The virus/trojans/malware is preventing me from running any of the setups for the spyware/virus scan etc. that I'm trying to downlad. It's just stopping in the middle. Also, it's giving me fake alerts about spyware that purport to be from Windows, but aren't. I'm beginning to think I'm truly screwed.

Comments

[mneme]

(coming from rm's request)

Doesn't sound like a virus.

Sounds like a javascript trojan that's inserted itself into your IE home page. Closing IE is probably just it tickling a bug in IE that crashes it rather than intended behavior for the malware.

Reccomendation: go into start/{might be more here}/setttings/internet settings and blank out your home page. Regardless, Firefox should be unaffected, and is less prone to this sort of nonsense in general.

You might want to look for "anti malware" software.

Regardless, back up any data you keep on that machine -- since the only recourse for a -serious- infection is to wipe the iron, reinstall the OS, and start over.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your advice. I definitely think you're right, as now IE is just constantly starting by itself, and then popping up these popups. Also, it's just playing ads now (out loud) with no player in sight.

I backed up important files, and now will see if there's anything I can do aside from wiping the OS.

This is so terrible!

Thank you so much for your help.