Re: anti-virus removal question

[voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Ask about this over at Majorgeek.com forums. I had a similar thing going on
on my husband's laptop (running XP).

There are some tricks you can use to clean this off the system, and the
people at majorgeek.com seem to know what they are and are willing to show
you how to save your system without doing a nuke and pave. Thay have saved
my butt on several occasions.
-Wendy

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 3:48 PM, Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net> wrote:

> My 15-year-old daughter is _almost_ perfectly responsible with her 2- or
> 3-year-old Toshiba Satellite laptop (with Vista). Her maturity level is
> more like 18 or 19 years old (in a good, well-grounded way). But she
> occasionally does still have those "teenager knows everything" moments and
> now,
> it's caught up with her.
>
> I recall how she was always too busy with the laptop and it was a real
> uphill
> battle getting her to let me install antivirus protection (AVG Free) and
> Spotbot
> Search & Destroy on her terminal, but at least it was done. But then she
> never
> updated them with new virus or antispam definitions, etc. Instead, I did
> when I
> could get access to the laptop.
>
> Then AVG stopped offering updates for her version of the "free" product, so
> that's as far as that went. The result: expired (i.e., little or no)
> protection
> for who-knows-how-long.
>
> But earlier this past week, her terminal wound up with the nasty pop-up
> that
> announces that the terminal is infected and to click on the onscreen box to
> upgrade to some unknown bogus antivirus program (not Norton, not AVG, not
> anything I've ever seen mentioned anywhere).
>
> And cancelling out of the warning window doesn't mean the end of things.
> Instead, every program she tries -- no matter what it is -- results in the
> onscreen window notifying her that this file (or that file or the other
> file, no
> matter what) is infected and she should purchase this "unknown" antivirus
> program.
>
> Can't run Spybot, or download even a new AVG -- can't do nuthin'.
>
> My good friend Tim (who is also a member of this list) advises me that if I
> can
> somehow come up with a bootable Vista CD, I should be able to use it to get
> up
> and running and then run AVG from a thumb-drive (data-stick, whatever you
> call
> it). (My own desktop Windows XP computer is well-protected, so I can
> prepare the
> thumb-drive that way.)
>
> But at my office, the IT guy tells me that my plan won't work. And another
> guy
> says the best thing to do is remove the hard drive from the Toshiba laptop
> and
> cable it directly to my desktop and then run my own scanning software on it
> as
> it will be recognized as another drive.
>
> All of this is logical, but now I don 't know which way to turn. Is Tim
> correct?
> Or it my company's IT guy correct? Or is the last guy correct? School
> starts
> here in Gwinnett County (near Atlanta) next Monday, so getting this done in
> the
> next day or so is the plan.
>
> -- Ken in metro Atlanta
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