This week we had a nasty virus to remedy. The "Vundo" virus made a terrible mess of one family's laptop in Coppell, TX. The customer made a very valiant effort to try to kill the virus herself but this one was particulary nasty. So she called us. While working on their PC at their home I was introduced to their pet ground squirrels. More on that later.
The Vundo virus disguises itself very well. It creates other files to do it's dirty work. Here's how we solved it.
1) The customer disconnected their PC from the Internet to prevent any further damage.
2) I downloaded the "FixVundo" program from Symantec and burned it to a CD. I also gave them the latest AVG anti virus software - the free version.
3) I inspected their PC for several key things then ran FixVundo.
At this point FixVundo takes a while to run. She introduced me to their pet ground squirrels. I never had met such a critter. Part squirrel, part rabbit. Truly a very cute pet. No they did not stink. They were just simply cute and low maintenance. I was very impressed.
At this point I let FixVundo run, told them I'd call later that night and come back the next day.
When I called later than night she had run FixVundo a second time and it did make some progress.
The next morning she ran it again and it seemed to clear up the problem - about 99%. There were still some remnants so I made a 2nd trip to their house.
There were some registry entries that needed to be deleted manually. The FixVundo program was supposed to do this, but it failed to do so. Most likely the virus was smart enough to detect FixVundo and tried to work it's way around it.
I was able to nail down and delete the registry entries, the .TMP files and the EXE's that needed to be killed.
When I left she was very relieved that she did not have to completely wipe her PC and start over from scratch. She had info that she couldn't figure out how to back up and didn't want to take the time to recreate it.
Oh get this, the AVG Free anti virus did a better job cleaning up after the Vundo virus than Symantec did. Surprised me too. But it made a believer out of her. Go figure!
That's it for this week. And if you are looking for a rodent pet that's not creepy, and actually very cute in a bunny rabbit sort of way, consider ground squirrels.
Have a blessed week!!!
http://www.christiangeeks.com
(817) 605-1819
Saturday, November 22, 2008
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