Category: Geeks r Us
So yeah, I got the privelege of cleaning this massive amount of spyware on my friends computer. Needless to say there were a many countless problems happening, half of which I took care of, however, I can't seem to take care of the other half. Part of it is due to the reason that the task manager is apparently disabled on his computer. Much to my dismay I can't seem to figure out how to reenable it so I can start eliminating processes.
Also, does anyone know anything about the highjacking malward known as Windows-privacy-protection.com? I'd appreciate any help from any computer savvy people I can get.
Thanks
Jess
It is most likely some other spywear that is disabling your ability to enter the task manager. I had a spywear attack here recently, and every time I brought up the task manager, it says that the administrator has blocked access to it. In otherwords, the spwear went in and took over administrative rights to the machine. A simple system restore rectified my problem, but if the machine is full of the crap, your best bet may be to copy whatever data you want off the harddrive, and then reformat. I know people don't like to do that, but it's the price you sometimes pay for not keeping a back up immage, and for not running proper spywear protection.
I'd love to hear the answer to this as well. I have the same current problem and I've been looking for ways to remove this spy ware I got a hold of. The one I am having trouble getting rid of is funniest.exe it disables the task manager as well.
Do anty virus / anty spyware scans in safemode.
If you've got a xp disk handy put it in and in run type sfc / scannow and let it do its magic.
I kno safe modes a bit annoying if your a total but really - short of a format its the only way.
and just to add to this - googling names always helps - you'll probably find some removal instructions which can be completed whilst not in safe mode.
But once you've got a clogged up box its lovely after its been formatted so if its at all possible i'd go down that root.
and what about using something else than task manager. Process explorer? I think, that it isn't based on taskmgr.
Copy and paste the below text to a file with a .reg extention:
Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem]
"DisableTaskMgr"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionGroup Policy ObjectsLocalUserSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem]
"DisableTaskMgr"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionpoliciessystem]
"DisableTaskMgr"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon]
"DisableCAD"=dword:00000000
End code
After you scan and clean up with a virus scanner, save and run it. Hit the yes button to the prompt, and restart. Hope that helps.
damn. It appears that the back slashes were taken out. Instead of doing that, check out this link.
Instead of all this stuff, and after this spyware is removed, I suggest updating your hosts file. It is more secure than any proxy server. The host file blocks access both incoming and outgoing traffic to websites. here is the issue. Windows doesn't have anything in the hosts file by default other than localhost, and dont' ask me why thats even in there it seems pointless. Anycase, contact me and I will send you my hosts file I have over 14000 entries. I know that software like spybot will anonymizes websites but the way it does it it through the allowed zones in IE which doesn't do a thing. The hosts file blocks everything that wants to access the internet that the hosts file blocks. This prevents ads from being shown trust me almost every site I go on has frames and all I see is blocked by hosts file. Therefore, it prevents any spyware from being installed or if it is already ionstalled, it prevents any further communication back to its home server. Needless to say I don't have any spyware protectrion because I dont' need it. The hosts file does it all.