virus warning

[piggy]

last week i was quitely going about my buisness and saw a review for a new avi to dvd convertor , good reviews, very fast, so i went to where i normally d/l stuff from and have never had a problem before did a search found it, d/l the program unzipped it and clicked install, before i go any further i must point out that i had running norton protection centre/ superantispyware and spybot search and destroy, then all hell broke loose norton kept popping up virus detected and removed , spybot kept telling something was trying to change my settings allow - deny, i immediatly removed internet cable as some viruses were downloaders and spent the next hour clicking ok and deny , there was also boxes popping up to buy anti virus software from about 5 different places and was closing them as fast as possible but in the end the system was overwhelmed and i got a red screen with a black symbol and all the shortcuts where to either d/l anti virus/spyware programs or connect to porno sites, i couldn't open anything so i unplugged PC with the intention of starting in safe mode or previous settings but windows startup just kept looping back to the beggining and refused to boot up, basically it was , so then the joyous task of reformatting [loosing everything] and reinstalling windows xp and of course a load of other software , but then the fun really started the pile of called windows xp automatically started installing my hardware :splapme without first installing sevice packs 1,2 and 3 anyway lets just say my dvd rw is still a cd rom and every time i turn on it wants to install a printer the doesn't excist but i'm at least back up and running and nearly everything is working properly , then it dawns on you what you have lost luckily i had backed up a lot to disk but ive still lost a lot i'll probably never get again, so please please don't rely on anti virus software and back up anything you don't want to lose.
what i really want to now is what pleasure these get from other people up and when i think about them the words testicles blunt knife and platter spring to mind rant over

[markwales]

What was the virus?

It sounds very similar to something I got on my laptop a few months ago called "outerinfo". The "all hell broke loose" is exactly what happened to me, trying to install anti virus and putting links all over my desktop.

I picked that up by simply visiting a website, and not downloading anything.... and no, it wasn't porn it was a bog standard Football Manager 2007 website!

Evil virus written by evil people!!!

Fortunately reformatting a Dell PC back to factory settings is a piece of cake and took roughly 4 minutes

[Win2Win]

Doesn't happen on Vista!

[piggy]

one of the viruses was called vista antivirus 2008

[Win2Win]

one of the viruses was called vista antivirus 2008

I had all kinds with XP, even being careful, although using Warez etc didn't help , never had anything on Vista in the 18 months I've used it, and haven't changed my habits