Computer virus?

[bcubed72]

I had been having issues with sluggish internet when FTP went down. I briefly considered this a virus until I logged onto 2+2 and discovered the truth...So I ran a virus scan that came up empty.

Today, my internet went down, followed shortly by my FTP connection. Looking at my virus protection (McAfee), I noticed that it is considered "moderately" old.

So, my new belief is that I caught a virus too new to be found by my current copy of McAfee. But, since I need internet access to download the most recent iteration of McAfee, how do I accomplish this?

[BluffTHIS!]

So how did you post this then?

[bcubed72]

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So how did you post this then?

[/ QUOTE ]

On my university's computers

[erbbysam]

If a virus is knocking out your internet connection your screwed because it's probably hijacking your connection for spamming or other such activities. I would recommend getting an updated version of Spybot S&D (link) to better look for obvious viruses but first get comodo firewall (link) which is the best possible firewall for leak prevention (ie. letting an unauthorized program through), they are both free. Also get TCPView (link) and see what's connecting to the internet alot(specifically look for "smtp" packets b/c they = emails being sent out) that should be and then attempt to stop it with Alt+Crtl+Del but that probably won't work so try to kill it with Process Explorer (link) which is generally much better at killing off unwanted processes.

Once you kill it Spybot S&D contains a startup program list which you should go into and uncheck the program that you stopped to make sure that it won't start up again.

All of this is free but you could also have a problem with your internet connection (ie. if your in a university) so check with your tech deparment if you can and make sure that nobody else is having this trouble.

[Beavis68]

if you can connect to the net in SAFE mode, you can do a free PANDA or PESTPATROL scan. That should tell you what you have and you may be able to delete the culprit files and reg entries or find a removal tool on the web.

You should back up important files and addresses before you start deleting reg entries though. It has usually worked well for me but I messed stuff up once and had to reinstall windows and all I had was an image disk can I lost a lot of stuff.