Just had this virus pop up on my old desktop at the weekend. After buggering about trying various things the computer is now in with local specialist guy to remove it and hopefully save my files etc. Havent backed up photos of our wee girl since she was born so i will not be pleased if these pictures are now un retrievable.

Any one else had this virus? If you have dont re-install windows or repair windows as i did after some "online" advice as this didnt fix it but now i cant perform a system restore as the have all been wiped when windows was repaired. Doh.

As long as i can save my pictures of our daughter i'll be happy as the computer is old anyway and probably due an upgrade.

Not entirley sure how i picked tis virus up as i have AVG installed but it appears to be a pretty clever "ransomware" type of virus. I did click a link on a gaming forum that someone had posted so whether that led me to the virus im not sure as when i clicked the link a few pages opened up but computer froze. I left it "loading up" tha pages, or so i thought, while i tended to the wee one who had started crying and then totally forgot about the computer for a while. When i checked back the whole thing seemd frozen so i tried closing the windows down and then this bloody virus popped and and locke dmy whole computer down.

I panicked for all of 2 seconds when it said "west yorkshire police have locked your computer" until i saw the bit at the bottom asking for money to unlock it.

All in all i dont know what i did wrong which is kinda worrying as i thought id be pretty safe with AVG free edition installed but obviously not. Must have been a dodgy link or something but how are you supposed to know that before you click it??

Can you use the computer at all? Even in safe mode? Try downloading some software called AdAware by Lavasoft, free of charge. What you'd need to do is let it do a full scan, and it'll tell you the name of files and such, then go into the hard drive itself through my computer and manually select and delete the files

Safe mode and malwarebytes should clear this.

I've done 3 times successfully with the above.

If your stuck let me know and I'll go further into it :-)

+1 for MalwareBytes, top piece of software.

Think it goes without saying make sure when your computer is fully clean afterwards change all your passwords for online banking, facebook, email any forums you use etc

Safe mode wouldnt work hence why i repaired windows. It then let me on in safe mode but is shuts itself down shortly after so no time to complete a malwarebytes scan. I started a scan but i only get a few seconds into it before computer just switches itself off.

Hopefully local guy has more luck. I havent had a virus for a long while but when you get one its really annoying. How did this thing get past my firewall and AVG? What morecan i do? I have malewarebytes installed also but it only scans when you ask it to, i dont think it monitors threats actively, but i could be wrong. I havent updated malwarebytes for ages so maybe thats the reason but i always thought AVG was supposed to be good.

Dont suggest Norton as that is the biggets hunk of junk ever made.

What antivirus software do you guys recommend?

I'm a big fan of Kaspersky, not to be judgemental here but your current antivirus product is it totally legit or off the back of a lorry?

I had one with it which only a format would sort, which was a while and I think mbytes wasnt aware of it, like I say 3 since dealt with in about half an hour. If your man is anygood those files should cause no problem as this thing just hides them from your OS making you think their gone, but they are still there. If he claims they arnt tell him to remove the drive and mount it on another pc

free products - I currently recommend MSE as AVG got really narky with v13 (would not uninstall properly)

commercial products - kaspersky is good but I just had a server fall over because of it so now removed and on Sophos instead (I like Sophos support as they all speak clearly english without a bad accent!!)

We regularly get calls at work from "Windows Support" telling us they have diagnosed a virus on our computer and they then start directing us to a site to download a program so they can control our machine.

The last time they called they got me, was hilarious - Stung them on for a while then told em I had a Mac!

What antivirus software do you guys recommend?

I've had Trend Micro for the last 3 or 4 yrs and haven't had any problems. Once you get your comp back either burn your piccies onto a couple of discs or buy an external HD to keep precious stuff on.

I truly hope your files are ok, some of the newer variants of this malware encrypt the files with a random 1024bit encryption key, which means your files become inaccessible once the malware is removed.

You should always backup your files weekly at the very least, otherwise you stand to lose a lot in the even of malware like this or HDD failure.

Dont suggest Norton as that is the biggets hunk of junk ever made.

What antivirus software do you guys recommend?

Avg is rubbish. Always has been.

We regularly get calls at work from "Windows Support" telling us they have diagnosed a virus on our computer and they then start directing us to a site to download a program so they can control our machine.

The last time they called they got me, was hilarious - Stung them on for a while then told em I had a Mac!

Next time tell them you need their IP address to let them through your firewall. Then post it here.

I know a bloke or 3 that might like some fun with them

Lol.. The program will most prob use the common ports. I cant see it using un common ports for just that reason. Yeah i know a few ddos kiddies. They come handy for things like this.

Any suggestions on how i should string them along next time? Be interesting to hear what funny ideas you guys may come up with

i find the best advice is (and im sure youll do this) never click on anything your not sure of, i even get paranoid of some pages and alt+f4 closes them down rather than the red x box

a virus checker cant stop things you allow whether you mean to or not, the virus's are clever buggers and come in many disguises these days so we need to be extra vigilant

ive several pc's and i use either eset, avg and webroot and all appear to be free, fingers crossed, and i often do a malware bytes scan to be sure

im sure, as said, with the drive in another pc youll get your files back

AVG WAS good, but something went terribly wrong when they updated it for Win7, I could never get it stable, or to play nicely with older XP based PCs, so ditched it for AVAST!

The computer got handed to local guy yesterday. I told him what had happened and he was aware of the virus. He said the first thing he would do would be to take my hard drive out and hook it up to his PC so he can extract the files. He seems pretty confident so fingers crossed. I dont really care if he can sort he actual computer as its getting on abit anyway although he did say he should be able to sort this also.

Im just paranoid now for when we get it back as to what antivirus to use from now on. I must admit though i could have saved myself a lot of stress if i did regularly back up my files. I have gotten pretty sloppy about doing this lately so will need to do this weekly from now on. Im sure the missus will nip my head about now to prevent this happening again.

I used the AVG free edition which was legitmately downloaded but im wondering if the proffesional vesion is more secure? Not sure what it costs but ill bet it would be lees than what ill have to pay this computer guy to sort my computer.

I suppose it doesnt matter what antivirus you run as these hackers are pretty clever and will just find a way round it no matter what. Saying that though ive never had a virus on my works laptop or the missus laptop. Her laptop is newer and runs windows 7 so maybe its better at resisting attacks. My works laptop is anceint and runs xp like my old desktop so how does it resisit attacks? It has sophus antivirus i think but its probably a commercial version of the softwars as opposed to the home version. Maybe i should run a "proffesional" version of antivirus from now on.

Computer guy just called me. Its all sorted and files are all safe. Phew. What he said was that the malwarebytes i had was the trial version so i need to pay £20 for the proper software. £20 is pretty good if it helps stop this happening again.

What a relief, had a horrible sinking feeling that the photos would be lost forever. He backed up my files to my external hardrive also. Will need to get into a proper regime of doing this weekly.

Leasons learned and all that but at least im getting my computer back. He says he tidied it up a fair bit so it will run faster also. Boost, might save me upgarding it for another while.

Cheers for all the replies though and hopefully others get their computers sorted who have this problem. Think it was pretty simple for him in the end i probably didnt help things by trying to sort it myself to start with.

Edited 23 October, 201213 yr by Jockdooshbag

Result, you were lucky as Manny says it sounds like that program can take out files now.

I'll have remember that for future reference!!

Computer guy just called me. Its all sorted and files are all safe. Phew. What he said was that the malwarebytes i had was the trial version so i need to pay £20 for the proper software. £20 is pretty good if it helps stop this happening again.

Good news, although I use the trial version of Malwarebytes and have never paid to upgrade to the full version. I use Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) and Windows Firewall on both my machines and have never had a problem. I'd suggest getting rid of AVG and use MSE as your anti-virus along with the built in Windows firewall. Use MalwareBytes to do a weekly scan and you should be hunky-dorey (I set Malwarebytes to not start when windows starts)

Good news, although I use the trial version of Malwarebytes and have never paid to upgrade to the full version. I use Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) and Windows Firewall on both my machines and have never had a problem. I'd suggest getting rid of AVG and use MSE as your anti-virus along with the built in Windows firewall. Use MalwareBytes to do a weekly scan and you should be hunky-dorey (I set Malwarebytes to not start when windows starts)

I had windows firewall on with AVG free edition. My computer guy said if i get the full version of malwarebytes it will upodate itself autiomatically and can conduct scans automatically. I hadnt updated my version or run a scan for a long long time so at least it takes the "idiot" element out of the equation.

£20 seems very cheap to be honest as its a one time payment for life. I will definately be paying for this when i get it back tomorrow. Will also now become a file back up fiend, especially for "my pictures" if nothing else. Just makes you realise how much important stuff we rely on our computers for. Scary actually considering what you can loose due to a simple virus.

Imagine all the computers went down, the world would be in turmoil. Babestation would probably do ok though.

what youll find with paid for antivirus checkers are things like real time protection which will help avoid things like this again although the mouse clicky brigade will always get them

also remember if your using a router your using a hardware firewall which are a LOT more secure than a software version aka windows firewall

and remember, you dont need to buy malware bytes, as said, its just it removes some of the human input when you do buy it

Edited 23 October, 201213 yr by the mad monk

AVG free only does viruses. If you want more i.e. malware you need the paid version - this is where many go wrong, expect something for nothing.

A years licence via ebay is around £5

Having said that I run the free malwarebytes every week - Can't be too careful...

Edited 23 October, 201213 yr by Web Ferret

remember if your using a router your using a hardware firewall which are a LOT more secure than a software version aka windows firewall

No, you often aren't. There's *slight* protection from incoming attacks due to the fact that the router will provide NAT (meaning your internal machines aren't automatically exposed to the Internet by default) but depending on the router there are ways to "trick" it into exposing them (abuse of UPnP and PMP-NAT to name two). And there's no protection against outgoing traffic (hidden keylogger on your PC piping every keystroke over an HTTP packet stream to Russia? 99% of routers will simply allow it, it's traffic going from your home LAN to the Internet so it must be OK cos it's not an attack).

Also, software firewalls have more useful features like being able to block traffic by process (i.e. block everything Internet Explorer does but still allow Firefox for web browsing; can't do that with any kind of router firewall because it's all port 80) so they're not inherently less secure.