Windows 7 Nasty Virus

[hawkeye62]

My wife just got a very nasty virus on her Windows 7 Home 64-bit system.

She received an Email that said FedX had tried to deliver a package but was unable to complete the delivery. Instructions said to open a .zip file and print out a form and take the form to the nearest FedX office to get her package. When she tried to un-zip the file, the computer gave a message that she had 38 trojans and some number of virus'. A program named "System Progressive Protection" then pops up asking her to scan the computer.

BUT, the worst effect is that NO program will run. When she tries to run anything, a window pops up that says unable to run because it is infected with a virus. So, she can't use Security Essentials to scan for a virus, or any other utility or any other program.

Any ideas? All I can think of is to try to restore a backup from a recovery cd. The backup is on an HD that was not powered on at the time of the infection.

Thanks, Jim

 

[Joe S]

Look on MS site they have a stand alone AV program you burn th disk and boot from that Utility Spotlight: Repair Your PC Infection | TechNet Magazine Have you tried booting into safe mode and running an AV scan from there?
Joe

 

[hawkeye62]

Look on MS site they have a stand alone AV program you burn th disk and boot from that Utility Spotlight: Repair Your PC Infection | TechNet Magazine Have you tried booting into safe mode and running an AV scan from there?
Joe

Thanks for your reply. I will give the cd AV program a try. I haven't tried Safe Mode yet. Maybe I will try that first.

Thanks, Jim

 

[helpifIcan]

Just to add to Joe's reply many Virus companys have a standalone AV program that you can burn to a CD and boot from to clean these type of programs. These are not real virus but scareware.

If you have another PC that can access the internet see if you can find a procedure for removing that particular scareware. It's been around for a while so you sould have no problem finding a step by step to remove.

 

[hawkeye62]

Just to add to Joe's reply many Virus companys have a standalone AV program that you can burn to a CD and boot from to clean these type of programs. These are not real virus but scareware.

If you have another PC that can access the internet see if you can find a procedure for removing that particular scareware. It's been around for a while so you sould have no problem finding a step by step to remove.

Will something like Windows Defender on CD find and remove the scareware? Or do I need to go through a very long and complicated procedure that I found on the web?

Thanks, Jim

 

[patcooke]

If you can get into safe mode and run a system restore you may find that simply takes you back to before the incident - probably the easiest thing to try.

 

[hawkeye62]

Thanks for all of the help. I used a procedure on Malwaretips.com to remove "System Progressive Protection" scareware from my wife's PC. It is a long, complicated procedure with 5-6 downloads of various types used to scan for viruses and other malware. Everything seems back to normal. BUT, if wife finds anything broken, I will do a system restore to a previous date and if that fails, A restore of a backup made several weeks ago will be the last resort before a format and re-install of Windows 7.

Thanks again, Jim

 

[Joe S]

After you get infected with maleware there is a risk of using system restore being corrupted or infected. If you continue to have problems look into a in place upgrade of Windows.
Joe

 

[patcooke]

This is one of the many scenarios in which Acronis True Image proves its worth. I've relied on it for many years, making regular system drive images from which to run a complete recovery in minutes - gets you out of all sorts of scrapes from viruses/bad installs/updates through to a complete hard drive crash. I keep three generations of backup images on external drives. If you limit your system drive to op sys and apps only, keeping all user data on other physical or logical drives the images will be very manageable, unlikely to exceed 20GB.

 

[Joe S]

Pat
I couldn't agree more. I have mine partitioned like that and restore only takes about 15 min from a USB 2.0 external HD. After the Windows updates finish and am sure there are no problems I make 2 images and keep a few previous ones. I make one on a second internal and the other alternate on 2 USB HDs.
Joe