So Windows has just given me a Trojan alert

I've already run an AVG scan and deleted several tracking cookies, but I am not sure if any of them were actually trojans.

My computer seems to be acting normal, for now, but considering the circumstances, I best take further action right now to keep this from snowballing.

Any ideas?

[Oscar]

Format?

system restore?

If you have a confirmed trojan, I think formatting is the best. It will almost guarantee that the trojan is gone from your computer.

I keep most of my stuff on my external, so i can reformat whenever i feel like it

[jayman]

malewarebytes.. i have saved many computers with this program
in the 8 years ive owned computers i have never ever had to format a drive, or take the computer to get it fixed .. i've had the wierd stuff happen, but these things are easy and cost nothing to fix.. i swear i'd do it for a living if i didnt feel guilty about charging people..i think people panic when the computer doesnt do what it's suppose to and there are people who take advantage of that..

Originally posted by Casper

I keep most of my stuff on my external, so i can reformat whenever i feel like it

That works only if the virus is simply registry based which usually only annoys the crap out of the victim, but the more most damaging Trojans likes writing exceptionally well hidden files. This then duplicates and refreshes the same reg key that wrote it in the first place. It duplicates on all drives including network drives ect. Which is the reason Microsoft invented UAC and doesn't like people working with the local admin account. If no access is given away it can't cause damage.

I believe MS Office had a pretty nasty leak with the olk folder located under temporary internet files that is now inaccessible unless, with xp you run a search for it. Not even the local admin can access that file with windows 7.

Originally posted by Casper

I keep most of my stuff on my external, so i can reformat whenever i feel like it

Me to! And i can intall 4 OS's and keep all my files universal. =D

Well my computer gave me windows alerts that said i have like 48 different trojans on my computer and its bad and stuff. So i bought the antivirus stuff they suggested. Well it ended up that i bought a virus instead of antivirus. So be really careful when "taking care of the problem"

yeah, only buy/use trusted antivirus software, AVG has done me nicely, but i got EsetNOD32, which is fantastic.

^^That is why you ignore windows when they say that stuff, it's called scare-ware. I was getting that, I instantly didn't believe it, and somehow figured out how to get rid of it.

Yeah, I was starting to get suspicious when AVG wasn't able to find anything related to Trojans on my PC, given how reputable a piece of AV Software it is.

After a computer reboot and a second scan, I think we can safely call this a false alarm. Thanks for all your help, guys! [:)]

On the topic of backups, I keep a completely seperate inactive Hard Drive on my computer so I can back up my entire drive onto it. If my computer starts acting strange, I just boot up a VERY handy program called Symantec Ghost (disc cloning software) and revert to the latest image I had it take of my drive.

Well, if you keep getting annoying pop-ups, you likely have scareware in your computer, such as the dreadfully annoying Advanced Virus Remover, or whatever. I had it, and it was a royal pain in the ass to remove, because it kept saying "cannot remove program because program is active". Somehow I got it idle and it was good enough for windows, so I removed it.

I use AVG Internet security and I also use windows defender and I also use malwarebytes on my computer and the malwarebytes finds stuff like trojans and spyware and backdoor bots on my computer. I will post the link to the Malwarebytes that I use on my computer it is www.malwarebytes.org go to that site and downloed the system and use it to scan your computer it might find out if you have spyware or any other bad virus on your computer or trojans or fake trojans on your computer. I use the scanner when ever I think that my computer has a problem or spyware or a virus on my computer and it finds it and deletes the viruses or trojans or spyware on my computer.

[jayman]

malwarebytes is awesome, even the free version actually removes bad stuff from your computer .. in fact i just had to use it 10 minutes ago to get rid of a rogue progam and all is well..