My rig has herpes

Best Anti-Spyware:
Spybot - Search & Destroy

Best Anti-Virus:
Trend Micro

Best Firewall:
Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall

Thanks to all for the info.
I've bookmarked all the recommendations and will be checking them all.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
Best Firewall:
Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall

Last I used something free it was Kerio + Avast (1-2 years ago) and it seemed
Ok.

I thought you had to pay for it now, but I see that it still works after the 30 days
trial. I'll check it out if Zonealarm gives me trouble, thanks Hx.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Did you check your device manager and then go to 'view' and tick the 'show hidden devices' box and then check the non-plug'n'play devices? This is where system level viruses/root kits like to, well, hide .
You will also find all copy protection drivers and things like Daemon tools (disk imaging software etc) here. It might be worth a try to set the 'startup type' for any drivers that have a "fishy" looking or unknown descriptor name to 'disabled'. Then reboot and see if anything changes. It might be worth a shot.

Well, that didn't go so well. Apparently, some rather important devices look very fishy in their normal course of business. So, my status is as follows:
1) virus has messed with the BIOS- changes to BIOS setup are either ignored or overridden. (this is actually the part that worries me most)
2) until Windows starts up "normally", the keyboard is completely disabled which makes it impossible to start up in safe mode or the like
3) Windows now pukes during initialization. Apparently, I disabled a device that controls lsass.exe, which must be pretty important. I get the Windows splash, then an error message. After I click on "OK", I get an unending black screen of death.
4) the system patently refuses to boot from either the DVD or CDRW drives, in spite of my persistent prodding
5) I'm prepared to drop the money for a new HDD and start fresh (then carefully pull data from the current HDD until I can do a complete "break out the magnet"
wipe job)

So, the $64,000,000 question is this: I can't fix the BIOS until the computer fires up and I can't fire the computer up until the BIOS is fixed. Assuming I can work thru that little conundrum, will an infected BIOS corrupt a new HDD as soon as I hook it up?

Simply "Flash" the bios from a floppy or flash (pen) drive if required but there should be no need.

To by-pass the isass.exe thing start in safe mode (hit l/ctrl or F5 or F8 depending.)

dte…why you no listen?..do a scan with hijackthis and report back with the scan results…i am waiting!

To go safe mode, you break into the boot and then arrow key up from "start windows normally". The observant reader will refer to point #2. No arrow key do I have at that point.

Since the computer will not start up any more, I'm kind of at a loss for now. There's really no opportunity to do a flash right now, and I certainly can't download and run your scan.

@dte,
Can you get to your "clear CMOS" jumper on the Motherboard? - if so, power-off th pc (pull plug) - put jumper on "short CMOS" for several seconds, then back to "normal" ….see if functions return.

PS, it will work better if you remove the battery and "short" cmos for about 20 seconds, all then should be at a "no data set" condition, the date and time and other page defaults will have to be re- entered.

Now that's a possibility. Will have to take a peek when I get home.

dte. this looks to me like a perfect opportunity to convince all who might need convincing that you need a new rig

Seems like it might cost a buck or two to renovate your existing one: I say go for it! You can't keep playing games exclusively circa1999 forever.

We still haven't sold the old house up in Indy. Until I unload that, there's no way I can justify a new rig to myself, let alone She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Although, after watching me climb the walls this weekend sans geek machine, I think she might be more on board than I am with the spending.

Originally Posted by dteowner
She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed

CM?

Hmmm… how sure are you that all of this is indeed caused by a virus? Can we totally rule out a hardware failure? This is starting to sound really weird… drives not opening, keyboard not working, BIOS settings not saving. Sounds like one nasty mofo of a virus . Almost too nasty to be true and since your system is older, well, I would suggest to try the following:

- Turn off your computer and also flip the power supply switch on the back side of your power supply to 'off' to make sure that your system is completely drained of power. Now pull the plug as well (and the keyboard plug, too) and hit the power button and hold it down to squeeze the last little bit of power out of the capacitors. Now put the plugs back in, turn the PS back on and fire up your system. Try to open/close the drives and to use the keyboard. Drive/keyboard failure can sometimes be caused by a power supply issue.
- If that didn't do anything, then I'd recommend to switch the BIOS battery next. Is your system really from 1999? Ever changed the battery? If not, then it wouldn't surprise me if the battery has reached the end of its life by now.
- If that doesn't do anything then try a different power supply if you have one lying around from an old computer.

If none of the above yields any results then the virus theory would become more likely again but what you described seriously sounds too nasty even for a really bad virus.

Finally, here's a pic of my device manager's hidden devices. I think the serial and parallel thingie have exclamation marks because I turned both ports off via the BIOS since I don't need them but otherwise this is what a virus-free (erm… hopefully ) system looks like:

Originally Posted by dteowner
We still haven't sold the old house up in Indy. Until I unload that, there's no way I can justify a new rig to myself, let alone She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Although, after watching me climb the walls this weekend sans geek machine, I think she might be more on board than I am with the spending.

Yes, that's how I got mine. That and whining a lot

Housing market is pretty crappy atm, but patience usually is rewarded. Good luck.

@Mo: I don't think dte's pc is actually quite that old-- just sarcasm on my part.

I recommend this:
http://www.iobit.com/

For virus I use AVG, mainly cause it's free as is the above. I like Window Personal Care cause it has a defrag feature and memory release and does a registry, spyware, etc… scan. Works well for me.

Thanks to everyone. I'll give that a try tonight as well, Moriendor.

I've got a build sticker on the rig somewhere that I can check, but I think that I had it put together in late 2001. Pentium 4 2.4Ghz were state of the art at the time. I ended up with an AthlonXP 1700, 512RAM and incredibly powerful GF2. I have since replaced the GF2 with a 128Meg GF3, replaced the original HDD (with the one that's now infected), added the CDRW, replaced the original CDR with a DVDR and replaced that with a new DVDR, and got a new monitor.

Originally Posted by magerette
Housing market is pretty crappy atm, but patience usually is rewarded. Good luck.

Patience is the only alternative. We've been patient since January. The realtor wants us to rip out all the wallpaper that was there when we bought the place (not sure what she wants us to do with the leftover glue that never completely goes away), replace the carpet (OK, it's a little worn, but it's not like there's holes in it or anything), and replace the garage door. She seems to overlook the whole "laid off" reason we moved in the first place. If I had a few grand laying around, I probably wouldn't want to invest it in sprucing the old house up for the next guy anyway. *sigh*

Too true. We had to spend almost $5K on repairs that we never seemed to need when we lived there, new carpet, painting the entire place, new flooring in the baths, and stupid guttering. Then the buyer wanted us to put in new counters and fix a window that hadn't been opened in fifteen years!
(We used words I can't repeat here in our refusal)
Thank God for credit cards…but it's an incredible amount of hastle. We did end up getting our price after all that though. I'm sure it helped that we sold just before all this "burst housing bubble" crap. If not for that, I would still be using my old Dimension 510 and looking with longing on everything released since 2004.

Hope you get some resolution. It detracts from a happy frame of mind to be pc-less.

Fixing up trivial things like wallpaper and floors if they aren't too bad, just before selling a house is a total waste. Most people after buying a house choose to change all that themselves, to what they personally like. Fixing up stuff that's broken, or looks absolutely terrible is far more important. After 6 months with one reals estate agent and No Sale, I would be looking elsewhere for a NEW agent. I just sold one of my investment properties for far more than I expected in 3 days using an agent who works hard at selling!! Several years ago, when selling a previous house, I had a couple of agents who did nothing and the house 'sat' for several months. I changed agents and it sold within 2 weeks!!

Our new agent came on board this week.

Back to topic, I gave everything a try last night. I dropped all the power and brought it back up with no change. I shorted that CMOS jumper, but it still wanted to boot from the HDD. So then I had the brilliant idea to short the jumper and then pull the power on the HDD. Booted from the Windows CD! Huzzah! Did a "delete the old install and put it on again" install of Windows (I pull the HDD power during boot but plug it back in before the Windows setup starts), which of course wiped out all my hardware settings. Half an hour later, the install appears to have been successful. The hardware autodetect didn't seem to be working right, because it wouldn't let me update anything, such as network cards, video cards, or even the monitor. So, at some point in that fight, Windows wanted a reboot. When it did that, it shows 2 installs of WindowsXP. It will not let me choose which one to boot with because the keyboard is still disabled during boot. I think the virus is still in charge.

Sorry about the trouble dte.

I am personally running Trend Micro for antivirus. I'm very happy with it. There has been a couple of times that I needed customer support, and I was able to contact them via phone very easily.
I used to use Mcafee, which is an absolute joke, worse than Norton. Mcafee decided one time to download a new BETA version to random users of their program (of which I happened to be one at the time) without their consent. The result was rendering the PC's of thousands across the nation nearly in-operable. I literally thought I HAD a virus. It was a horrible experience…. there is NO phone number on Mcafee support sites whatsoever… the only reason I figured out they were to blame is because of their support forums, which was mostly full of other users helping EACH OTHER through the debacle.

If that wasn't enough, six months after I stopped using their AV, they decided to automatically debit my account for another $70, evidentally concluding that I didn't really mean what I said when I told them where they could put their software!