Getting rid of Trojan Horse

I'm writing for a newbie friend to PCs that got the Trojan Horse. To my objections as a happy and uninfected (EVER) NScape7.1 user , he's using IE6 and Outlook. I told him I'm not up-2-speed on viruses because I've never gotten one, even without any virus ware, but that I would check here. The only experience I've seen with Trojan Horse is that it keeps coming back, short of a HDD format. My friend is using AGV (or AVG, whatever) as his virus ware, but it couldn't get rid of it because it's in his WINNT/Sys32/*exe . Can anyone help me here? He's also using Win2k SP4.

If push comes to shove, and I have to reformat; will a "Format C: \u" for an unconditional format do the job?

Thanks,
GPLEA

 

I'm going to Netscape for good

First of all, I apologize for putting yet another post on here about the Trojan; but believe me, I REALLY did do a search (Trojan Horse) and came up with only 1 thread . Only after I posted my thread did I see the other 4 or 5 threads. Anyhoo, after reading them I've come to the realization that one has to have immense experience, time and some $$$ to keep these pests out of my life. My God, there's a whole industry built around this activity. Not to beat a dead horse, (really, no pun intended, but it does fit quite well ), but I truly haven't had to burden my life or brain with such boring technology, and I can get to the things I actually like to do on my PC. I don't really have anything against M'soft, REALLY, but I do know how to stand at arms length from somebody with a REAL virus. I'm reformatting their HDD.

Thanks,
GPLEA

 

A reformat really isn't necessary. Viruses can be removed, and the system can easily be made more secure and less susceptible to future infections. Post back if you care to pursue less drastic measures.

 

How to protect your PC from spyware, viruses, trojans, etc. ?
Easy to ask, but volumes have been written.
You could start here
http://www.wilders.org/
Specific to Trojans
http://www.trojanscan.com/
But this is just one of many programs.
EDIT--I see that trojanscan is "temporarily" down. Here is another trojan scanner
http://www.swatit.org/

 

My point exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself. Why spend HOURS, WEEKS, MONTHS educating myself on something I don't need to when I can educate myselft on something that's actually useful to me and my endeavors.

Thanks Again Anyways,
GPLEA

 

gplea,
You can still get adware, spyware, viruses, trojans etc using Netscape. If you are connected to the internet, without a firewall and AV protection, you are vulnerable. Browse through the security forum here.

Johanna

 

gplea,

Dunno what system your friend is running but the only effective FREE method I have found if they are running XP is to remove all system restore settings, reboot and run any antivirus programs available...as a double safety measure....though shouldn't really be necessary, but do it as a precaution anyway then reboot and restore system restore again.

You can check and uncheck sys restore by right click My Computer/propertie.system restore and you will see the small square to the left top.

Hope that helps.

roy66

 

Johanna has a very good point.
gplea, if you do not have an AV program or a firewall, how can you be sure? The are a few malwares out there that will give no indication of their presence. Without a good firewall running with stateful packet inspection [this is not XP's built in firewall], you could be an unwilling participant or a zombie in a DrDOS attack on another computer, or mass emailing trojans and viruses. These things do have their own emailing process, not needing to use yours, but they will use your address book.
BTW, if you cannot get to the DrDOS link above, this is suspicious, as that site is sometimes blocked by malware.