Anyone know much about firewalls, virus, trojans etc

[Ska Wars]

Random question but here goes.

Basically the PC had a shit fit last night. Over about a minute or two my firewall (alas, XPs) turned itself off, my desktop background was changed to a message saying "You have a virus etc etc", also the ability to change any display settings disappeared and then the PC restarted. When it came back on it crashed within 10 seconds as soon as the ATI control panel loaded.

Restarted in safe mode and removed the ATI controls and did the usual spy checks. Got rid of about 100 or so items apparently, but now when I try to reinstall the ATI drivers I get "MSI DB Return Error code is: =0" and it refuses to install. If you install the drivers manually it crashes again.

Installed Omega drivers which seem to work ok but my PC is still having a few weird problems. The first is, the font for this website is stupidly huge. Everything else is ok, just this site for some reason Also, if I do a google search, when i click on a result it quickly loads a completely different page (usually a search page).

Anyone had anything like this happen before?

Also can anyone suggest a decent fire wall (free for now if possible) and some anti virus/anti spy ware stuff. Currently using: AVG, Spybot - search and destroy and Ad-Adware SE.

Also, can no one suggest 'format' as I'm two weeks away from my Master Degree deadline, so can't really afford to do it now. I'll definately be doing it once it's handed in, but for now I'm just after a quick fix to keep the thing from dying.

tl:dr - PC is fucked, help!

[Shade-of-Grey]

first of all, back your important masters shit up (what are you studying btw?), because theres no way to tell if it's gonna come back.

as for a good firewall ZoneAlarm free has always been the go to solution as far as i've known, though i've not used a software firewall for a long time.

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/ ... rewall.jsp

as for anti virus, i use AVG 8, but it seems to have failed you pretty big, the only other FREE av that i know of is avast! which seems to be decent. the best ones you really do have to pay for -- namely nod32 and kaspersky.

also, you might want to try running ad-aware by lavasoft and hijack this! in addition to spybot.

hope this helps -- oh, and make sure to format it. format it hard.

edit: oh and tbh, i would try to avoid using the computer as much as possible because this virus sounds pretty nasty, and you could probably infect others or potentially have a keylogger, etc.

[Ska Wars]

Cheers SoG, I'll try and check them out.

Did a few more scans and came up with these:

Could Not Remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\tdssserv.sys
Could Not Remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\tdssadw.dll
Could Not Remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\tdssinit.dll
Could Not Remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\tdssl.dll
Could Not Remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\tdsslog.dll
Could Not Remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\tdssmain.dll
Could Not Remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\tdssservers.dat

Anyone know what they are before I try and nuke them?

[Shade-of-Grey]

you can try looking through this list

http://www.what-process.com/list-dlls.aspx?l=T

[RichyCunningham]

Comodo is a good firewall. I use it and am very happy with it.

A good antivirus that no one can contest is ESET NOD 32! Best AV out there!

[Puddle]

Ska be real carfull with those sys 32 dlls
If you can dload in safemode with network support.

Run this

http://www.download.com/Trend-Micro-Hij ... 27353.html

[Cheeto]

Ska, I hate to say it, but unless you wanna spend a day or two digging through Hijack This! logs and googling the shit out of all running processes and tray icons, you're not gonna clean that mess up. Best bet is to stop trying to fix it and hurry and finish your project. Back up all your work nightly and as soon as masters are over then format C: because you my friend have a helluva infestation.

[Ska Wars]

Cheers guys. Jed gave us a .bat file that seems to have ratted out most of the problems.

@ Puddle. Cheers mate, running it now.

@ RichyCunningham. Thanks for the tip mate.

@ SoG. The process list was really handy, thanks mate. I study MA Digital Art and Media (specialising in 3D environments and animation). I'll post my animation when it's done (3ish minute film about Jekyll/Hyde).

Cheers for the helps guys. Reps going out now.

EDIT: @ Cheeto. Yeah, it's pretty much under control now, but formatting definately once I'm finished.

[Koobazaur]

Bah, I come to late. But was basically gonna say the same thing as others, so nothing's lost.

Also, I loved this part:

MSI DB Return Error code is: =0

Think of the =0 as smiley.... fits so perfectly - "whoaaaaa.... error =0"

[jow]

Aw, Jamie :( I'm sarry to hear, mate. I didn't mean to give you a virus when I was poking around in your back door :(