PaintingMom
Aug 31, 2008, 05:32 PM
FYI . It's not a question but more of a warning about the xp antivirus Virus. Do not open the a window that pops up on your screen and looks legitimate like a virus scan. I thought it was my own virus scan kicking in as it does to perform a checkup, but when looking closer I didn't recognize the name (I use webroot) and it was xp antivirus. Sounds legitimate, but it's not.
It (xp antivirus) will tell you that you have 100s of virus's on your computer (it doesn't) and it looks totally believable when it's running the virus scan (it looked like my old webroot!). It will then tell you to simply click on a button to order xp antivirus to order the $$$ download. I didn't do it (I feel bad for anyone who's done that!), but even buy clicking the upper right hand box, the window wouldn't disappear. I knew I was in for problems.
Those problems included: background changed color (wallpaper). The xp antivirus also hijacked websearches (or redirected websearches). For instance I wanted to immediately order something like Spy Docter to get rid of it, so when I google'd Spy Doctor, I was brought to a website that had nothing to do with Spy Doctor by with XP Antivirus. Whatever I typed in such as "remove xp antivirus from my computer", I would see 100's of links, but they ALL were fraudulent and most likely would try to redirect me back to XP Antivirus. Other major problem totally took over AOL, Comcast, Gmail, Yahoo, so no email.
The only way I learned all about the nasty details, was to do a Google search on these types of terms, but to look into cache to see what many people have written about to get rid of this thing. If I clicked on the main website in the Google search, I would get nowhere.
I tried following directions to remove all the files with blphcv, lphcv, phcv, etc. I did remove them. Then I realized I had an old webroot program so I did a virus scan. The thing caught a bunch of virus and trojans (my last scan had been about 2 weeks ago with nothing). I had xp antivirus, the trojan gozi, and a bunch of adware. Webroot removed most of the problems, but I still was unable to go to a website like Norton Utilites, or any other valuable website with info about removing the xp antivirus.
Finally gave in an talked to the Geek people with Best Buy. Was charged $169 and they were able to clean up my computer in 3 hours while I was on the phone with them. No problems anymore and a huge lesson learned. I will not be opening any attachments that have large files. I will not go onto anything like Youtube, Facebook, etc. as these are where a lot of problems are coming from. Interestly, when I was infected with this xp antivirus popup, I was on a friend's blogspot. So I'm still unsure how I got it. Maybe someone on my friend's blogspot had a photograph or something weird and the blog got infected? I don't know. I'm not a tech, but a person who just uses a computer to talk with friends and do some work.
Be aware of this xp antivirus. It totally sucked. I think it's been around for about 5 months or so, but the Geek Squad said they had received numerous calls about this one today alone, so I'm sure it's going around.
It (xp antivirus) will tell you that you have 100s of virus's on your computer (it doesn't) and it looks totally believable when it's running the virus scan (it looked like my old webroot!). It will then tell you to simply click on a button to order xp antivirus to order the $$$ download. I didn't do it (I feel bad for anyone who's done that!), but even buy clicking the upper right hand box, the window wouldn't disappear. I knew I was in for problems.
Those problems included: background changed color (wallpaper). The xp antivirus also hijacked websearches (or redirected websearches). For instance I wanted to immediately order something like Spy Docter to get rid of it, so when I google'd Spy Doctor, I was brought to a website that had nothing to do with Spy Doctor by with XP Antivirus. Whatever I typed in such as "remove xp antivirus from my computer", I would see 100's of links, but they ALL were fraudulent and most likely would try to redirect me back to XP Antivirus. Other major problem totally took over AOL, Comcast, Gmail, Yahoo, so no email.
The only way I learned all about the nasty details, was to do a Google search on these types of terms, but to look into cache to see what many people have written about to get rid of this thing. If I clicked on the main website in the Google search, I would get nowhere.
I tried following directions to remove all the files with blphcv, lphcv, phcv, etc. I did remove them. Then I realized I had an old webroot program so I did a virus scan. The thing caught a bunch of virus and trojans (my last scan had been about 2 weeks ago with nothing). I had xp antivirus, the trojan gozi, and a bunch of adware. Webroot removed most of the problems, but I still was unable to go to a website like Norton Utilites, or any other valuable website with info about removing the xp antivirus.
Finally gave in an talked to the Geek people with Best Buy. Was charged $169 and they were able to clean up my computer in 3 hours while I was on the phone with them. No problems anymore and a huge lesson learned. I will not be opening any attachments that have large files. I will not go onto anything like Youtube, Facebook, etc. as these are where a lot of problems are coming from. Interestly, when I was infected with this xp antivirus popup, I was on a friend's blogspot. So I'm still unsure how I got it. Maybe someone on my friend's blogspot had a photograph or something weird and the blog got infected? I don't know. I'm not a tech, but a person who just uses a computer to talk with friends and do some work.
Be aware of this xp antivirus. It totally sucked. I think it's been around for about 5 months or so, but the Geek Squad said they had received numerous calls about this one today alone, so I'm sure it's going around.