Virus blocked Internet

[thewolfe]

Working on a friends computer who I have LogMeIn installed on.

Last night he called me and I got on his computer and he had all these \"virus alerts\" popping up.

So much that his sys tray had overtaken his Tasktray.

He had AVG installed but didn't show up anywhere so I tried to get on the net and it would only take me to the site that was trying to sell the anti-virus software. Don't remember if there was an name but it was like \"Anti-virus 2009\".

I got the computer, ran Adaware and AVG on the hd and found some viruses that I removed.

I installed hd back in his machine, no more popups, can see it from LogMeIn but can't get on the net through his IE7.

Deleted his browsing history turned off Window firewall (no diff) and that's about all.

Running XP SP3.

What next?

[Krom]

Tools ---> internet options ---> connections ---> LAN settings (button) ---> uncheck \"Use a proxy server for your LAN...\" (most likely set to 127.0.0.1 on port 5555) ---> press ok (twice) and the internet should be working again.

[thewolfe]

Krom,

You've done it again...again....again.

Thanks much.

[fliptw]

its probably internet security 2010.

[Duper]

*psst* Use Linux. Virus problem solves.

[Floyd]

*psst* Use Linux. Virus problem solves.

until 80% of computer users do

[CDN_Merlin]

Once 80% are using Linux, they will start making virii for Linux then.

[Duper]

Do you Really think that's ever going to happen? The nature of linux makes it very difficult to create a successful virus; more so than windows by a long stretch.

[Kilarin]

The nature of linux makes it very difficult to create a successful virus; more so than windows by a long stretch.

Difficult, indeed. But, as you pointed out, not impossible. If everyone were using linux, virus problems would be a LOT less, but they wouldn't be gone.

A big advantage though would be that the problems would be in the open. Once an exploit was found, there wouldn't be any secrecy about it and it should get patched fairly quickly.