Could Spybot be infected? / Where does a virus reside?

  • Thread starter Thread starter riverking
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riverking

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I have been plagued with a virus for almost 6 months on my main pc. Thanks to all of those who have helped so far.

However, last week it got to the stage where the machine was unusable and, after freezing up, I would get nothing other than a blank (black) screen on powering up - no opportunity to even enter setup.

In the last few days I've discovered even more problems. ALL of the options in services.msc had been switched to 'disable' (print spooler, plug & play etc.). After resetting (guessing) which options I required, I ran Spybot S&D, the pc locked up and I was back to scratch, sorted it out, ran spybot again and each time I did the pc would freeze either part way through or immediatly after running Spybot.

I removed the Spybot program (also MS Spyware), and downloaded new versions via link on the microsoft download site. Ran Spybot, same thing!

Finally, I removed the HDD from the pc and temporarily replaced withh a HDD from an old Gateway pc. The replacement HDD also locked before it had even started up fully ??

Have now gone back to original HDD, got it running after lots of attempts but;

1) Do I run Spybot to look for a virus or
2) Remove Spybot and hope for the best

Can Spybot itself 'carry' or attract a virus?
How did the virus (if that's what it is) jump from one to the other HDDs when they were never connected simultaneousely? Where do they reside other than on the Hdd? :(

Should I do an oil change?
:thumb
 
it could be a corrupted BIOS but it's probably just a f*cked operating system.

the HDD from your old machine won't boot in the new one, cos it's configured for the old hardware. sometimes doing that might work, others not.

reinstall windows.
 
Just ran Spybot again, at the end of the scan I just had time to see 'Congratulations! you have no known Viruses' then 1 SECOND LATER, screen goes black, nothing works, will not start up - ie. turn power on, hear HD spin up but no 'beep' followed by 'memory testing' etc.

If I can get it to run I'll reload windows Cookie ta :thumb - if not, I shall carry out a Nato Standard 'float test' on the fekker.
 
I had a PC that had very similar symptoms to yours because the processor was cooked. Make sure you have absolutely everything you need off that HD before you re-instal, else you could end up with no PC and a wiped HD.. :eek:
 
Memoty problems tend to freeze the system but not black out the screen. I'd suggest you've got a problem with your CPU or PSU. PSU's easier / cheeper to replace.
 
If it's an AT, it's almost certainly the PSU. If it's an ATX...... PSU, CPU, or motherboard. Probably cheaper in the long run to take it down to your local computer peeps (NOT PC World!!!!)
 
Hmmm...my money's on memory chips......I had a duff one and it froze the system repeartedly and randomley AND blanked the screen, caused shut downs, all sorts of odd stuff.

RAM's pretty cheap these days so it might be worth getting a 256mb chip to test the system Steve....

There are also some pretty good memeroy testing utilities out there which write to every bit of the chip's memory sequnetially and report back on its status.......can't remember where I downloaded the one I usewd from but a poke around Google should find it...It may well have come from Sysoft (who incidentally produce a very good benchmarking tool...'sandra'....that can tell you all sorts of usefull stuff about your system as well.
 
Update:

Have suffered from the above problems for 6 months+, situation getting gradually worse. Since last week I have been virtually unable to start the system, when I have managed it, I have gone no longer than ten minutes or so without a 'freeze' - either with screen showing or, more often, 'black screen'.

I completely removed Spybot at about 2pm today, shut down the system and ran all the other clean up utilities, so far I have gone 5 hours without a glitch!

I also noticed today that there were 2 types of 'black screen' - one absolutely black identical to that with all power off, and a 'midnight blue' screen almost identical to the black but once you have spotted it you can tell which is being used - almost like a false mask being used. Wierd but true.

The evening should tell if I've found a cure!
 
It could also be your graphics board. MS upgrdes have caused a fe types to fail (Eg mine :rolleyes: ). Check to see if you can download new drivers.
I had new memory, HDD and reloaded OS before finding the problem.
 
i'd bet it's a hardware issue.

We' had 6 PC's in the office running solidworks - 2 of them regularly freezing - shutting down etc.
very frustrating when doing 'real work'.

Eventually had to strip them to their component parts and do swap out tests - turned out to be 1 stick of 2 sticks of memory was faulty in one - and the other was a cpu.

nightmare.

good luck.
 
just a note, altho your problem is pointing to hardware don't rely on spybot to detect viruses its a great program for spy/malware but its not designed for detecting/removing virii

good luck with tracking down your problem
 
So far (7 hours since removing it) Spybot seems to have BEEN the problem :nenau
 
altho removing spybot may have resolved the immediate problem the fact that spybot was crashing your machine indicates that there is mischief afoot :eek:
 
unshift said:
altho removing spybot may have resolved the immediate problem the fact that spybot was crashing your machine indicates that there is mischief afoot :eek:
Click to expand...

That's what Spybot kept coming up with - 'Do you want to send WWW.MS/[email protected] to the Quarantine area' :D
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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