Win 7 Internet Security 2012 Scare Averted ***Beware***

[Mischa]

wow, so I was bumming around on a few sites, and I all of a sudden got an error, and after a few frantic minutes of searching google on my phone since Firefox was now unusable figured out I had a malware program called Win 7 Internet Security 2012.

Now that I understood exactly what the hell was wrong with my computer, I could now set out to destroy this program.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-win-7-internet-security-2012

I followed the steps, and it cleared the program out, however, it also wiped out my computer's ability to handle .exe file extensions normally, since one of the self-defense features of the virus edits the registry to ignore .exe files and open the virus instead. As a result, one of the steps destroyed the corrupted registry file. To repair this, I had to find a way to get Windows to re-associate .exe files with their programs, which is under this link: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19449-default-file-type-associations-restore.html (look for the exe file).

All in all, I outsmarted the bad guys.....that's gotta sting that they got beaten by someone in diapers still!

[sarah_ab]

reading threads like this makes me even more grateful i have a mac... i remember the days of hte blue screen of death and all that malware stuff....

[~*PrincessZozo*~]

I had to fix the vista version of this the other day. It's really not that hard. Find offending file, delete, do file re-association (easy) done. Not even a half a beer job.

[Guest Baby Rina]

i have been the go to girl for all things pirated related for all of my friends in the area, and in some cases out of the area. i can find anything online that someone needs which includes dropping nets in some rather unsavory areas of the web and i can honestly say i have never picked up something like this. Maybe just the fact that i knowingly go into places where stuff like this hangs out means that i have tighter screens setup than you do?

And like Zoeykitten said after reading the article about this one i have had to go up to a friends house to take care of it for them too and it was maybe a 10 minute job... i dunno, i was paid in dinner and the job was done before dinner was so yea... just make sure you keep shields to maximum and evenly distributed around your ship, no sense leaving the aft open when you know there's cloaked about.

[DiaperPony]

Had an interesting Windows experience the other day. I had installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my new laptop. It only took a few minutes and everything was working great. I decided I should probably install XP too "just in case". First I had blue screens in the installer that I had to get past. Then once the install was done hardly any of my hardware worked. Had to put up with that though, as I had hours worth of updates and service packs to install. Once that was done, I was hunting for drivers for hours, never did get my sound to work, the webcam wouldn't work, and one of the drivers I used (video, I think?) caused crashes every few minutes. Keep in mind I went to official manufacturer pages to get these drivers, I wasn't just going to any old site, and I was being careful to select the right ones. I missed being able to theme the UI and move things around like I could in Gnome 2. When I wanted to install software, I missed having Synaptic where I could find practically anything I wanted for free and have it automatically keep track of what needed to be updated. I was constantly annoyed by the security restrictions in Internet Explorer and downloaded Firefox as soon as I could. I did not like having the operating system phone home to Microsoft for activation or WGA. I was constantly paranoid that someone would be hacking me or that if I went to the wrong website I'd be vulnerable.

My experience really made me wonder: why do people put up with this stuff? Then I realized... the laptop had shipped with Windows 7 on it. Wiping out what came on the computer would probably be pretty scary for most people. "What if I put Linux on and it doesn't work or it sucks?" My laptop didn't even come with a disc to reinstall Windows, so I couldn't get Winodws 7 back even if I wanted to (or if I was running Windows and it broke I'd be screwed too). Most people probably don't realize that the popular Linux distros have what are called "live CDs", where they can boot up without changing anything and find out if everything works before they install. I'm sure there are secondary factors as well, besides inertia: herd mentality (use what is most popular), self doubt (I'm not smart enough, I heard Linux was for nerds), and probably other false, misleading, or outdated things they'd heard.

In my opinion, for the vast majority of computer users, a Linux distribution would meet their needs better than Windows: faster, cheaper, more secure, 99% of hardware just works, lots of free software, tons of free support options, etc. About the only thing that a person can't do is play Windows-only games, but I guess that's true for Mac too, and it's not like it's a limitation of the operating system. One last thought: I tried installing XP again, this time in VirtualBox. Most of my complaints remained, but at least there weren't any driver problems. And, it was fast enough. I should have just done that in the first place and saved myself a ton of time. But, I haven't used it since. So, I had myself succumbed to the FUD, installing XP "just in case". In case of what? Who knows... I can do everything I want to in Linux.

[curiositykilledthecat]

Irony is I can't run ubuntu without it crashing every five minutes. If you let it get out of date it won't work. I dual boot win 7 and ubuntue 10.x and windows is for gaming and linux for any editing or work stuff. I gotta let the o/s update overnight

[DiaperPony]

Hmm.. I've never experienced crashing on Linux except when experiencing hardware failure (not really acceptable then either, but at least understandable). Can you tell me more about it?

Not sure what you mean about updating. A friend of mine has neglected updating Ubuntu, and is like 3 years out of date, and their computer is still working fine.

[wetman]

My Toshiba laptop came with Windows7 preinstalled and without disk as well, but it had instructions on how to create reinstallation disks. I replaced the original hard drive anyway, and did the same as DiaperPony, Linux with XP on a VM. Xubuntu 11.10 though, because I don't like Unity, with Compiz bodged on because I use the enhanced zoom function quite a lot (and I so got used to wobbly windows on a cube<grin>). Works just fine.

@ curiositykilledthecat: what kind of hardware have you got? The current 3.0 Linux kernel has got a lot more hardware support then the 2.6 that ran under 10.04. Or give Mint a try, it's supposed to be rather good.

[hidden]

Gotta watch out for those "security scanners"

If you didn't install it, it is a virus.

Gotten several variants over the years. Pain in the rear to get rid of.

Remember being in a school computer lab and the person next to me got one of those. His word document became corrupted and could no longer access it. Hadn't saved in a while either.

[babychubby]

HMMMM a simple Solution DONT USE winblows exploder.

[wetman]

HMMMM a simple Solution DONT USE winblows exploder.

Use common sense and (even if you have to aquire some first) knowledge.

Apart from that: IE isn't all that bad anymore.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/09/chrome_ie_firefox_security_bakeoff/

Lynx is usually unaffected by security issues. <trollface>