Hello

Many months ago I was advised by many of you here to create a second user
account on my pc with administrator access, and to call it something like
'Comp_Admin'.



Luckily, I took your advice.

A few days ago I was hit by a virus called 'antispyware soft'. It prevented
access to the net, control panel, task manager, even 'system restore' . The
advice I got from my local PC shop was to reinstall my system from scratch.

In an act of total desperation I logged in as Comp_Admin, and found I could
then get into system_restore. I restored backwards a few weeks, recovered my
net access, got advice from this site, downloaded and ran some free
anti-virus software.

At the moment I think (repeat think) I have defeated the virus.

Had I not followed your advice re: Comp_Admin, I would probably still be
reinstalling my software. Thanks , thanks, and thrice thanks .

A final thought, I have Norton, which failed to spot this virus. When I
contacted them over the net they said they were aware of this virus, but
were too busy dealing with others. I'm sure they are honest people, but I
wonder about their priorites.

Thanks again for your advice.

K

KRK wrote:
<snip>

> A few days ago I was hit by a virus called 'antispyware soft'. It
> prevented access to the net, control panel, task manager, even
> 'system restore' . The advice I got from my local PC shop was to
> reinstall my system from scratch.

</snip>

<snip>

> A final thought, I have Norton, which failed to spot this virus.
> When I contacted them over the net they said they were aware of
> this virus, but were too busy dealing with others. I'm sure they
> are honest people, but I wonder about their priorites.

</snip>

It's not a virus. It is, specifically, rogue anti-spyware. Some may call
it a virus, but I would not.

I wouldn't advise a home user to use Norton anything. There are less
expensive (see: "free"...) and better (see: "uses less resources, catches
more bad things, better value") products out there.

As for your other story, having a backup administrative user... Great.
Fantastic.

Now do you do what was likely the other part of the advice and not use an
administrative user all the time for everyday tasks? This is really
critical and can prevent problems you cannot be sure you got rid of (like
this one) from every arising. ;-)

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html