Virus Scam
waiting4rezultz
Enthusiast - Level 2

Has anyone out there experienced Privacy Protection pop-ups stating your computer is infected by a virus (worm)?

This scam is preventing ability to open Internet, etc. What is the solution? Is there a solution?

Thanks,

Anti-Scam

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Re: Virus Scam
Anti-Phish1
Master - Level 1

Are you running anti-virus software on your system?

Do you have a backup of your system that you can restore?

If you anti-virus software can't remove it and you don't have a backup you can restore, your best option is probably to reformat and reinstall Windows.

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Re: Virus Scam
waiting4rezultz
Enthusiast - Level 2

Many Thanks for your input---Sincere Question: How does one reformat and reinstall Windows?

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Re: Virus Scam
tns
Master - Level 2

Its not hard, but you probably want to avoid it unless absolutely nothing else works.  You will tend to lose many things, perhaps everything, that you don't have backed up.

if you have antivirus software try it and if you still can't get it to work, then try contacting the support from your antivirus to fix things.

Note there are some bad sites that issue phoney notices of virus detected in attempts to make you run bogus anti-virus software that often install trojans or spyware.

Re: Virus Scam
lou611661
Contributor - Level 1

Run malwarebytes free edition,it is the best at getting rid of these types of evils.

Re: Virus Scam
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

I second the movement to run Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Very good program that should clean out malware infections if one or more are present. SUPERAntiSpyware also works well alongside Malwarebytes. Both are free programs so you should be able to get them at their respective websites:

http://malwarebytes.org/

http://superantispyware.com/

If for some reason the Malware is redirecting your computer to another site INSTEAD of the Malwarebytes website, I would just skip straight to this download page:

http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?part=dl-10804572&subj=d...

OR

http://filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

Reformatting a computer and reinstalling the Operating System is quite a chore. A complete and proper re-install of Windows can take a day to complete doing everything by hand, and using a fresh Windows install. You would have to back up all data you wish to keep, boot into a Windows disk (or recovery partition, ick!), reinstall Windows, and then install the latest Service Pack for your machine, all applicable updates to Windows and drivers, and then start to re-install all of the programs you used along with their respective updates. Then if you're like me, you would need to apply some tweaks to the operating system to ensure it runs the way you want it to run. Quite a chore but it ultimately is the best way to fix things 🙂

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Re: Virus Scam
viafax999
Community Leader
Community Leader

Could try spybot SD

also avast though it's a little bloated and slow these days

both free

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