First, let me say that I do not know everything and have been in the business 12 years and have no formal computer training-I am self taught. I have to be decent enough as an expert speaker in a few IT fields that I have given presentations and the like on IT issues and I am a small business owner. I do have a degree, but not in computers-I am a lowly Wharton School Alumni. The purpose is to help others specifically that have been infected unknowingly by Redwood's website, but a lot of this is useful advice. There are a few threads on the Alley about this, but frankly I think they suck.
I am only going to address Windows issues, although I do work on UNIX, SUN, Crapintosh (J/K), et cetera I will go mainstream. First, if your computer still works reasonably well, you can probably get back on track. If the system is really hosed with a zillion pop ups ad the like, you are most likely going to have to pull the hard drive out and scan it on a good machine with antivirus and malware programs. This can be done by connecting it via IDE, SATA or USB in an external enclosure. This is the first thing we do when a PC comes into our shop, we have 2 dedicated killers for this stuff and we pop the customer's hard drive only the C drive is necessary in 99% of cases.
Stage I
Let's talk about your system is really messed up with pop ups, really slow system and the like. If your system is running reasonably well, go onto Stage II below. Power the system down, pull your C drive's hard disk and connect it to a good machine and scan it. AVG has a free download from their site (beware of rogue websites that look like the real thing!) and another combined with AVG is superantispyware.com On the host machine disable system restore, update definitions for whatever AV and malware program you use and scan. Reboot and rescan until you are free. Power down your host machine, remove hard drive and put back into your computer. You are not done yet, please then go onto stage II.
Stage II
First, make sure you are using an administrator account. Disable system restore and update your antivirus and spyware/malware protection. There are a LOT of good programs out there just FYI, but not a single one is good enough. My systems run three and this is my laptop which has Norton Corporate Antivirus, superantispyware, and XoftSpySE. You do not have to use these, but a virus is differentiable from malware, Trojans, et cetera. I am not going to post a ton of stuff, I am trying to do damage control for the moment. Decent Antivirus can show no viruses and that by itself indicates squat. If your antivirus is compromised, it can easily show nothing especially if you allowed the program to install. Like if you see XPAntivirus2009 which is a TOTAL virus that redwood’s system was trying to get you to have installed, and you allow it to install, your system will be exposed to more harmful crap than ever before. If you Google free spyware or the like, you will see lots of credible looking websites that will infect you and make the problem worse. Anyhow, use a mainstream antivirus like McAfee, Norton, AVG, Kapersky, NOD32, OneCare (Microsoft’s version) AND some spyware program at the VERY least like superantispyware, ad-aware. You have to get clean scans from both of whatever combinations you get and if you got a lot of hits, you need to uninstall your antivirus program and install another one you can get as a trial again that is MAINSTREAM so you avoid the possibility of introducing more trash into your system. Do your live update and scan until clean. Lastly, boot into safe mode (hit F8 key right before Window splash screen when starting up your computer) and choose safe mode without networking and rescan. When the system is all clean, enable system restore if desired and go back to work
Lastly, don’t open squat if you are unsure. File sharing is like sharing blood, you are sharing other people’s carp-you will get infected. No debate, it is just a fact. Like Pam Anderson, it might be fun, but not worth it-lol. We have maybe 100-200 machines in my shop right now and I see this crap daily. A few of you are my customers, this is not an effort to solicit business, but to help the Redwood victims get back on track. Why do people do this? Simple answer is money. The more people download crappy programs, the pop ups come (like Redwoods and others) to sell you stuff like a cure to what they just infected you with. The Internet-isn’t it Grand? Gary
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Redwood victims and spyware malware virus infected folks
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