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Presumably this was a virus?

catbasket

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I've been cleaning the nasties off a neighbour's badly infected PC and came across a problem I'd never seen before - after installing and running Spybot Search&Detroy and SpywareBlaster, Ad-Aware would crash at the same point during a scan (tried three times).

Further investigation showed that if Ad-Aware, Avira Antivir or Explorer attempted to read the folder C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp the program would crash.

I'm guessing this was a virus, but does anyone know what it might have been?

(I got around the problem by using Bart PE Builder to create a bootable CD which allowed me to delete everything within that temp folder [NTFS]).
 
I try not to think about it anymore. The explanation I got when this happened to a computer brought into me is just that whatever it was knew that people would use those programs to find it and put programming in place to thwart them. Couldn't you just browse to the temp folder and delete everything in it? I do that before any scan anyway just to cut down on the time needed to scan. No program needed to do that. Sometimes uninstalling and re-installing the tool works, too, if not tedious.
 
The likely explanation was that the file system itself was corrupt. Think of your directory listing as an index. The page numbers aren't visible, but in fact the files are scattered all over your hard drive and not in the order shown in the index at all.

Since all three programs crashed at the same place it is likely that the real crasher was Windows. It's also likely that a virus took advantage of a known problem in Windows to make a directory unreadable by normal means.

This is all speculation, I could easily be mistaken.
 
I think I'll stick with the virus theory - there were four viruses and more than fifty trojans removed by the various antivirus programs I ran.

The poor PC had been left connected to the internet (broadband) with no firewall/antivirus/antispyware "only for a couple of days". The owner had bought NIS ... but not run a scan since mid February. XP was SP1, auto update had downloaded SP2 but it hadn't been installed.

He only realised there was a problem when Micro Billing Systems' MBS Account Manager got onto the PC and presented him with a bill for GBP19.99 at every startup ... there's no way you can miss that evil bit of software.

Happy ending - PC is now squeaky clean.
 
I have the same problem!

I cannot clean my disk using Disk Cleanup for drive c:. Something is in there preventing me from accessing Temporary Internet files.

Can you please give me your step-by-step procedure that worked? Thank you.
 
Unless you have unbacked up data, in this sort of situation, it might be worth considering a Windows reinstall from scratch. It does no harm once in a while anyway.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Unless you have unbacked up data, in this sort of situation, it might be worth considering a Windows reinstall from scratch. It does no harm once in a while anyway.
Click to expand...

Actually I tried that ... right from my Microsoft Disk. My version of XP, however is an upgrade, not a full blown version -- if that matters.
 
Just thinking said:
I have the same problem!

I cannot clean my disk using Disk Cleanup for drive c:. Something is in there preventing me from accessing Temporary Internet files.

Can you please give me your step-by-step procedure that worked? Thank you.
Click to expand...

This works for Win XP, not sure about other flavours of Windows.

Download Bart PE Builder from http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2172421/bart-pe

Extract and run the executable - this creates an ISO image of a bootable CD.

Burn the ISO image to CD (I used either Nero or CloneCD - not sure)

Boot from the CD.

Login to an account with administrator powers, browse to the affected folder and delete everything in there. (Make sure you're in the right folder!)

Reboot normally and all should be ok.


NB - I used a clean, non-infected pc for burning the bootable CD. I take no responsibility for anyone trashing their pc by following this advice!
 
Last edited:
Snow said:
This works for Win XP, not sure about other flavours of Windows.

Download Bart PE Builder from http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2172421/bart-pe

Extract and run the executable - this creates an ISO image of a bootable CD.

Burn the ISO image to CD (I used either Nero or CloneCD - not sure)

Boot from the CD.

Login to an account with administrator powers, browse to the affected folder and delete everything in there. (Make sure you're in the right folder!)

Reboot normally and all should be ok.


NB - I used a clean, non-infected pc for burning the bootable CD. I take no responsibility for anyone trashing their pc by following this advice!
Click to expand...

Thank you for the details. I have downloaded the PE Builder and have it stored in a folder on another drive (not c). I'm also running XP version II. I have Nero so making the disk is no problem ... as soon as I get one. I presently have none left that I can burn. I'll post back here after I clean things up. (Hopefully post back here ... ;))
 
Bart PE is an excellent resource. My sole grouch is it won't recognise USB drives , so rescuing files can be a pain unless you can get networking up and copy to a network drive. (Or have a floppy drive and no big files).
 
Soapy Sam said:
Bart PE is an excellent resource. My sole grouch is it won't recognise USB drives , so rescuing files can be a pain unless you can get networking up and copy to a network drive. (Or have a floppy drive and no big files).
Click to expand...

Huh. Recognizes my USB drives (Maxtor OneTouch HD, OCZ Rally 2 and Sandisk Micro Cruzer) all just fine.
 
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