Return of the computer saga
This story begins on a Friday afternoon. Last Friday afternoon. I got home from work and my husband says something like “Your computer is doing something weird.” I sat down to look at it and yes, it was doing something weird. Avast kept deleting the same file over and over and over. I began to have a very bad feeling because that most likely indicated that there was something nasty recreating that file that the antivirus program wasn’t catching.
I tried to start up Malwarebytes Anti-malware. It can usually find and clean things that antivirus programs miss. And I’m not talking a specific antivirus; McAfee, Norton, AVG, Kaspersky, Avast, you name it, they miss things.
It wouldn’t run. Cue more of a bad feeling. I’ve had experience with a certain virus/trojan that does not allow programs like Malwarebytes to run.
The next step was to start Windows in safe mode to try to keep the virus from running, which would hopefully allow me to try to clean it. First attempt was met with the message that I wasn’t allowed to force a safe boot because I wasn’t an administrator, which is entirely false. (Lecture me later on always running as an administrator.) Bad feeling gets even worse.
I already suspected that I had a variation of Vundo. Researching the different process names that my antivirus had tried to delete and/or block proved it. Vundo has a lot of variations, often manifesting itself as “Personal Antivirus” or “Antivirus 2009″ or some other bogus piece of crap. Some versions place “infected” files on a computer and then try to get people to pay money for their “antivirus” program which is guaranteed to remove the “infected” files. Other behaviors of the virus are disabling network cards, replacing screensavers and wallpapers with “warnings” and hiding the options to change them back, disabling antivirus programs, Windows updates, firewalls, and malware sweepers such as Malwarebytes. Often times a machine becomes so corrupted with files that keep recreating themselves that formatting is the only option for completely cleaning it. While researching I had managed to get the computer started in safe mode run Malwarebytes. It found several infected files which it said it fully removed but I still saw some unusual things in the running processes. I decided to reformat it.
Problem was we already had plans to go out of town for the weekend and I wasn’t able to start formatting until Sunday night. I got all of my things backed up then and got started with formatting and reinstalling Windows Monday night. Everything seemed to be going well except that while I was making preparations to back up I wanted to write down the models of my ethernet card, video card, etc so that I could later download any missing drivers. Quickest place to find the part names is usually device manager EXCEPT… the trojan hid every device from device manager. I thought no big deal, we can get it off of the motherboard later.
Except after we took the case off to look at the motherboard (it’s a custom built computer so I couldn’t just look it up on a manufacturer’s site) and then put everything back to start it up again it didn’t start. It typically beeped once if it was going to boot up. This time? No beep. No BIOS start up screen. In fact, nothing showed on the monitor. The fans were running so it was definitely getting power. We’ve tried all sorts of things; even taking all of the RAM out didn’t produce anything different.
Everything points to a dead motherboard. This does not please me in any way. Things started going wrong when the computer got the virus. I don’t even know how that happened, by the way. I keep my antivirus up to date; Avast has never failed me before. I keep Windows updates installed. I keep Java and Adobe reader updated. (Those two are more of a security risk than what they seem to be worth.) I even have Adblock Plus running most of the time so that ads can’t sneak anything malicious on my computer. The motherboard might have failed had we not been looking at it, trying to find out what drivers I needed but that wouldn’t have been necessary if that damn trojan had never wormed its way on my computer.
For now I am left using my 7 year old laptop that I got before I started college. Thankfully I kept all of my photos on a separate hard drive; they should be safe but I have no way to access that drive right now. I don’t know if we can try to fix my computer (I think that motherboard is no longer in production) or try to buy me a new laptop or desktop. See, my husband’s computer was having problems last November so he shipped it to his friend to have some parts replaced. The computer was damaged during shipping and we have been going back and forth ever since trying to get the insurance claim squared away and the check that should come along with it.
I am so disappointed. I had thought that maybe I could get another lens for my camera and/or purchase some needed software but NOPE. Disaster (ok that’s dramatic but ugh) strikes AGAIN. Every time it seems like we have an opportunity to buy something a little “extra” something else breaks. Or an emergency appendectomy is required but hey, that was completely necessary. Considering some of the other things that have been going on (which fall under the category of “I don’t talk about that because it’s work related”) I am just not thrilled about money at all right now. I guess, though, that this is what some people call first world problems? I mean, I do still have this laptop.
**The title is a reference to the series of posts I wrote when I was trying to get my computer fixed the last time the motherboard went *poof* It took at least three months to get the parts to replace it…