Curing a virus-laden PC

I don’t know how it happened. My computer seems to be hacked, infected, slow and the new graphics card does not do its job. I am at my wits end. My computer was infected with several viruses some months ago and one hacker. Working with my dad, we seemed to erase the hacker but the damage caused seemed to be too great so, following instruction from numerous professinals we reinstalled the entire system. At first all was well, aside from a slow graphics card which I marked down to poor drivers. But now, despite my firewall and antispy/virus software, things seem to be worse than ever.

I don’t know how it happened. My computer seems to be hacked, infected, slow and the new graphics card does not do its job. I am at my wits end. My computer was infected with several viruses some months ago and one hacker. Working with my dad, we seemed to erase the hacker but the damage caused seemed to be too great so, following instruction from numerous professionals we reinstalled the entire system. At first all was well, aside from a slow graphics card which I marked down to poor drivers.

But now, despite my firewall and antispy/virus software, things seem to be worse than ever. Direct draw 3D is no longer available on the system. When I am on line, the system sometimes locks up, yet is fine once I disconnect (Is someone downloading to my computer at this point?). Also, Windows takes several minutes to open and scroll through. I don’t know what to do. Please help.

— Gary Russano

You have already done quite a bit. From what you have indicated in your message, here are a few ideas that I thought to look for:

First, go back to your old video card. It sounds like there may have been more than one change that happened within a relatively short period of time. Remove the new video card and see if thing start to return back to normal. When installing the older video card and drivers, make sure that you disable your anti-virus software just in case the anti-virus software misreads the video drivers as virus activity.

Depending on what happened when your system was hacked, one or more programs or files may have been altered or damaged. So don’t connect your computer to the Internet until done bringing it back to a good state – only install things from CDs. If things still haven’t returned to normal, get the latest versions of Spybot, Ad-Aware and Microsoft AntiSpyware (there are other good apps, but I’m most familiar with these three). You will need to see about getting the manual updates for the applications you are getting ready to install. Once you have addressed any problems reported by these utilities, install another utility called HiJackThis.

Run HiJackThis and compare the log file it creates against some of tutorials you will find online when you download HiJackThis (on another, virus-free computer!). Move carefully with this tool as the potential exists to cause even more damage than you have at this point. Depending on the problems reported by HiJackThis, you may need to install a different browser such as Firefox so that you can leave some .exe and .dll files inactive and give you a better chance at resolve the problem.

You mentioned that you had reinstalled the operating system. If you didn’t format the drive before reinstalling the operating system, the problem you were having could still be there. You can take the log generated by HiJackThis and post it to one of the forums found on spywarewarrior.com. You will find others here that may have had a similar problem and able to offer suggestions for getting the problem fixed.

If you still aren’t able to resolve the problem, you can try reinstalling the latest service pack for the operating system on your system. If this doesn’t work, see if you can borrow a unused hard drive from a friend. If you remove your current hard drive and install the temporary one and install the operating system, see if the problem is still present. If the problem has gone away, there is something on the other hard drive causing the problem. If the problem continues, you may have hardware problems potentially related to the motherboard that may be resolved by going to a new motherboard.

I wish I could go into more detail but your situation is not one that can be resolved by a simple yes or no answer. Take notes as you go along. You should be able to get back to a usable system, but it will be a matter of what it takes to get there.

More tips: See what suggestions other users have for the problem – and add your own.