Trojan

[AtW]

Have you tried rebooting in safe mode without any networking, and then run anti-viruses?

[Paddy]

Paddy,

Have tried to system restore but unsure when it downloaded will be restoring again going back 2 months. But unsure whether I will still have the problem after this.

Symptoms are machine slowing down and appears to crash when virus checkers locate it. According to checkers it is a malacious programme trying to access my information. Virus checkers are telling me it is a 'bearshare' virus (malwarew). Currently running the following
stinger
avg
sophos
norton (appears to find it but crashes at that point)

Both avg and sophos have found it but machine crashes before I can get to it.
If you can give me any help it will be appreciated.

Cheers
Pig

According to Sophos, Bearshare is not a virus it is a Controlled application . Many AV products wrongly detect some legitimate programs as viruses. Even worse some anti-virus products detect phantom virus in order that users will want to buy the full version of their product. There are AV products that actually plant viruses into the PC.

I doubt the problems that you have are caused by that particular “virus”, but the actions of your PC running slow seems to point to spyware.

I would recommend removing all of your AV programmes and use either Norton, Sophos or the free version of Avast. For spy ware use the free version of Spybot.

If your PC is crashing running these applications (presuming you don't have a hardware fault) then download a bootable CD (XP?) from the net, that way it will boot without the virus in memory. You can the install and run the AV. (This is a much easier job than it sounds)

Sometimes viruses attack the boot sector of the hard drive and this is the only way of removing them other than a new install of the OS.

[ChimpMaster]

Sometimes viruses attack the boot sector of the hard drive and this is the only way of removing them other than a new install of the OS.

That's a very good point and is the reason my new PC has 2 hard drives, a smaller 80Gb for the OS and a 400Gb for data. It'll make it far easier to re-install the OS if ever need be.

[Zorba]

In such situations as yours, I use the Trinity Rescue Kit - it boots to a Linux prompt but is really easy to use. If it's connected to the network it can download the latest definitions for ClamAV, Bitdefender, AVG and another one that escapes me and then scan the PC.

P.S. it's free

[2uk]

format C: - best of breed.

[Zorba]

I can think of one occasion when 'format c:' didn't help at all.

[cykophysh39]

www.avast.com

Download the anti virus , the home edition is free and it is the Mutts Nutts

[Zorba]

format c: doesn't touch the MBR...

Or the D: drive

[Paddy]

www.avast.com

Download the anti virus , the home edition is free and it is the Mutts Nutts

It's good but it does not find everything.

[Ardesco]

From my experiance Kaspersky is one of the better ones. I used to use McAffee but the latest version is a pig, prolly because symantic bought them....(My opinion of symantic is very low indeed).