Major Problems!

[EXreaction]

Ok, today I was looking on a friends laptop...she was having some spyware and virus problems she said...well, she was definatly right!

...first, she is running XP Home SP2

...she used to be running Norton, but I uninstalled that...since it wasn't doing anything

...first thing I did was install avast home, and sygate personal firewall...then rebooted...

when I got back on, avast ran a boot scan, and only found 1 thing...which I deleted...it was a adwaregen or something...

...then when I got back onto windows, I was going to start uninstalling all that extra crap...like all those dumb toolbars/popup blockers that like to install themselves...and she said she tried to uninstall them all already...and some that she said she uninstalled, were back again... and a bunch of toolbars would not uninstall...one said that some .dll was missing, the other opened up some web page...which didn't work since the wireless networking would not work...

the one major problem I an having, is that non of the firewalls are working...sygate just will not load at all...and if I try to run the windows firewall, it says that you have to enable some service...which I tried to do, but it said it could not start it up...

...when I ran spybot S&D, everytime it would try and delete something, it said it had an error...

The MOST distubing thing I have ever seen happened on there as well...nobody was touching the keyboard, or mousepad...all of a sudden run loaded up...out of nowhere...and then the mouse pointer moved over, and clicked on it, and typed in "paint" ...then it started to load up paint, but there was some error, and it could not load it...

Sorry it is so long...I know I hate reading them when they are this long...but I have tried everything on this pc...the only thing left that I can think of would be to backup some stuff, and reformat, and reinstall XP...

...one other thing...she said she already tried reinstalling XP on her machine...and that when she entered the XP serial # that is on the bottom of her laptop, it said that her number was not accepted...and was invalid... ...I am at a total loss here...I would like to help her now, but I only see her on mondays through thursdays...at school, and I would have to drive 35 miles to talk to her...

[ChubTub]

Sadly, after all that you have said. My vote would be to wipe the hard drive and reinstall (hopefully she entered the key wrong). From how bad it looks you may never know if the computer is clean. The whole mouse moving by itself thing scares me.

It is the hard way but in the end may save you more time.

[rrcn]

Run hijackthis and post back.

[EXreaction]

Well, that is the thing...I won't see her again until monday...

But I will download it, and run it then.

[vikeor]

...all of a sudden run loaded up..

ghosts!!

sorry too much F.E.A.R lately :P

ye, id say run Hijack this and also try giving MS Antispyware a run... Only good MS product out there

[EXreaction]

Ya, I will download that to...the one big problem is that I can't update it once I install it on hers...since it will not let me connect to the wireless network...or load up a firewall...

[electric]

just maybe she type in caps for her serial #

and good luck

[Jakaar]

I wouldn't even bother doing any of the above suggestions except for a complete wipe and re-install. You're going to spend many more hours trying to troubleshoot and remove the spyware/viruses/whatever than you will just re-installing windows and setting up proper protection.

[EXreaction]

Ya, she already did that...so I guess that she must have typed the XP key wrong in the first place...and she thought that she did type it right...

Oh, also, you might want to check the date of the last post before you reply...this thread was over a month old.