A Bho Nearly Drove Me Mad

[PITA]

I'm pretty good about using various free tools to keep my PC clean, prevent and remove malware. Then about a week ago, after some younger kinfolk used it I found it infected with mysearchdial. As one who uses Opera almost exclusively for years there was pitiful little info on ridding it from that browser.

I did everything I knew and and had actually cleaned it out of all my browsers except Opera. It was driving me mad, but a friend that's an expert remotely looked it over and the only thing I'd forgot to check was my homepage setting. A little embarrassing, but finally got that pos out of my PC as well as my nightmares. Saying it's a beyatch is not giving it enough credit.

Just be careful and don't make the mistake of letting kids play on your PC. It can end up driving you mad trying to clean up afterwards.

 

[Itchy]

Related to kids and PCs. In my family room I have a PC with two partitions. First partition hosts the OS and is locked with Kiosk software ("faronics deep freeze" if your interested). Second partition is left open for saving files and such. This computer has been alive forever and is just as fast as the day as it was first installed. I have personally downloaded several viruses by accident. Just reboot. Everything goes back to normal and no scanning for viruses or updating virus definitions or spyware and blah. It's a little aggravating getting your settings the way you want it but once you do. Freeze it. Done.

You get used to not saving things to C: (locked partition) and saving to D: instead. It adds extra steps to Installing new software but I am good with that.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info.

 

[PITA]

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for the suggestion, I know what you mean by one being alive forever. I'm not looking forward to swapping to 7, even though I needed to long ago, but with XP losing updates this coming April we XP lovers aren't going to have new holes found and closed in the very near future.

I'll have to try the software you talked about, until then I try to keep my Admin account closed by a PW the kids don't know to try and keep that mistake from happening most of the time. Just took one instance of forgetting that to remind me of the dangers of leaving it running.

So thanks for the idea, and a chance to remind people about XP updates ending soon.

-P

 

[PITA]

I had a friend who is a professional remotely look it over and it's been cleaned squeaky clean.

The only problem I had was finding instructions on removing it from Opera, he checked my HJT logs before even beginning to look for the Opera problem. It was a little embarrassing but I'd overlooked my homepage setting. One reason being I never thought of the speed dial as a homepage, plus I thought I'd made sure my HP settings couldn't be changed. But that was the only stone I'd left unturned apparently.

Things are working fine now, and have been since he found the last remnant left in my homepage settings. 

Thanks for the suggestion though, it's much appreciated.

-P