There is a most vicious virus going around called "Personal Security." My shootin' buddy got it and a local woman brought her machine into my computer guru's house while I was there helping him put together a new machine just last night, January 14.

This virus is a bad one. You boot up your machine and very quickly you will get a screen looking very much like a Windows warning about your system's security. What the virus-spreaders want you to do is to click on their phony site. Doing so installs the virus. It's a bitch to get out, for sure. My guru does it; it takes him about an hour to root it out and install Windows Security Essentials, Glary Utilities and MalwareBytes to combat it. You need to get a program called Fake Anti-virus Uninstaller. You will also need Revo Uninstaller. Revo gets everything left by Add or Remove Programs, which is a waste of time. The process to do it is too long to describe here, but I have some links for you below. My friend's computer was cleaned, but the damned virus came back. The virus came back to the computer of the woman who had hers cleaned. Seems the only way to kill it is a total wipe-out of the hard disk and re-install of Windows. That means everything you have is gonna be gone. I have eset's NOD-32 as my anti-virus and I have had no problems. NOD is the best. Don't waste your time or weigh down your machine with Norton or MacAfee...

Here are the links...

1)http://www.bleepingcomputer.co...ve-personal-security

2)http://www.precisesecurity.com...e/personal-security/

3)http://www.wikihow.com/Manually-Remove-Personal-Security-Virus

Don't know why that last one ain't a link. Copy and paste, then...

I got it at work, IT said it was a bitch to get rid of.

quote:

I got it at work, IT said it was a bitch to get rid of.

Hope you don;t get it at home. My shootin' buddy called me this morning. Said he had a little red shield down in the corner of his screen. Turns out it was just some Windows warning about security being disabled, or something. No problem. The woman must have gone back to the site from where she got it the first time, because her's got it again.

Do some searchin' about this virus. A repair tech who tells you your drive needs to be wiped if you get this thing may be right-- or not. Depends upon how deeply it's gotten into your machine. If you bail right away, your stuff can probably be saved. If you get sucked in and make that fateful click, your stuff is most likely gone. Word to the wise: DO BACK-UPS!! Second word to the wise: Get eset's NOD-32. It's the very best AV out there. Just $60 for two years. That's just 8.2 cents per day. The fix of the woman's computer took about an hour and cost $75...

While checking those links I found these nice little programs.

this one displays everything on a hard drive

http://windirstat.info/

and a good hard drive defrag utility

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

"Personal Security" is back. It's now called "Security Essentials 2010." Same virus, just using the trusted name of M'soft's security program. Don't be fooled. Just get eset's NOD-32 and know you are safe. I also run MalwareBytes and Glary Utilities. Both are free downloads.

Here's the Security Essentials 2010 link...

http://www.infopackets.com/new...ls_2010_is_rogue.htm

Got it on my home PC.....2 trips to my IT guy and it's running fine, but there's still something lurking in the background. I can't open security center in control panel......and Norton AV picks up something called boot.mebroot every night on the scheduled scan.

I think I've already mentioned what I'd like to do to the folks that create these things.

BACK UP YOUR DATA.

Hardware is cheap and replaceable ... data is not.

Anything precious to me is on a hard drive not plunged in unless I need to retrieve something.

The stuff I really don't want to lose is also on TWO cds.

If I have to wipe the drive in my machine it's a pain , not a disaster.

Our local internet provider, Guadalupe Valley Telephone Cooperative, "upgraded" their system a couple of days ago and all kinds of crap got through to lots of people's computers, including our desktop, including this "security" virus. Desktop is totally kaput. I'll probably have to take it into the big city 'cause I'm bettin' all the local, little computer repair places have been slammed. I did backup all our pictures a few days ago. At least we have that. The real pisser is if you call their sub-contract IT help line, the geek just keeps saying over and over, no matter what question you ask him, "I don't know, but THERE'S NO WAY IT'S RELATED TO THE UPGRADE."

Anyway, I was impressed to find something about it here. Thank you guys. AR has absolutely everything!

It sure dose feel good when you realize the important stuff is safe

"Personal Security" is back again. It popped up around August 1. My computer guru is having his hands kept full doing removal jobs. If you get it, power down immediately. Then power back up, hitting F8 repeatedly until you get into Safe Mode. Once in Safe Mode, nothing will execute. Then you can go looking for the virus. I haven't had any trouble with it since it first popped up many months ago because of the protections I have on my machine. I run my utes every night and NOD-32 is a constantly-on thing. To find the virus, I'd try searching your drive for Personal Security or words similar.