Help I borrowed a computer and now it caught a virus

[Guest]

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[Tatiana]

I hope it is okay to ask this question. It has nothing to do with kiva, but there seem to be a lot of smart and helpfull people here. Moderators can remove it if they think it is inappropriate.

Tuesday I have my first environmental science exam. I just started studying this at the Open University.

My father was so kind to lend me his brandnew and very expensive laptop to help me study the last week for the exam. I don't own a computer myself yet.

(The open university is home based, for this subject I constantly need the internet)

But now his computer seemed to have caught some virus, It keeps changing the internet page to the page before every few seconds. I can't use it to study anymore but worse, how do I explain this to my father? Until today it worked fine. I've been surfing a bit more than normally, but I don't think I visited strange websites. It does it both with internet explorer and firefox

Any of the smart people here have any idea what to do?




Thanks in advance,

Tatiana (From another computer)

[rinkuhero]

Have you tried downloading and running an anti-virus program? I use AVG Anti-Virus, but there are a variety of good free ones.

[Eli]

Some websites just do that automatically for me, no virus required!

[Tatiana]

Have you tried downloading and running an anti-virus program? I use AVG Anti-Virus, but there are a variety of good free ones.

Usually I use my mum's old computer. There I have installed AVG and that works very well.

This new laptof of my father's has avast! antivirus. It seems to be constantly active, but I couldn't figure out how to let it do an extra run, and it didn't give me any warnings that something was wrong.

[Tatiana]

Some websites just do that automatically for me, no virus required!

But it is every 1 or 2 seconds, on any website. Even the ones from the Open University.

I wouldn't be able to write a single word on this forum from that laptop now.

[Sengbe Pieh]

I have avast installed on my laptop & it works fine.

It was the second highest rated security program by Consumer Reports magazine & it was free.

If you right click on the avast blue ball in your taskbar, you should get a list of options.

Select Start Avast Anti Virus & then run a scan.

[Tatiana]

Thanks bikeme. Doing it this way it does the exactly the same as when I opened it from the programs earlier.

 (I just didn't expect it to be finished so quickly I guess, AVG on an old computer takes much much longer)

But is still gaves no result and the problem is very much still there.

[rinkuhero]

Another possibility is that it's a problem with the keyboard or something, perhaps the keyboard key that takes the computer 'back' has its mechanism jammed.

Have you tried seeing if this problem exists in all browsers (i.e. Firefox and Google Chrome too), or just Internet Explorer?

[wthepoo]

Tatiana,

first of all, don't worry too much - it is highly, if not completely unlikely that the computer has suffered or will suffer any damage. In the (almost) worst case, a new OS-installation should fix it. This can be time consuming and annoying - and you should make sure that you have a back-up of all (important) data (and screen it for viruses)... but still, it's nothing you couldn't explain to your father (even ignoring the fact that this can happen to anyone nowadays).

Now - I don't know avast!, but assuming that the OS is Windows (XP or Vista), you will probabaly find a logo of/for "avast!" in the system tray (lower right hand corner; perhaps you will have to click on the little arrow pointing to the left to expand it). Double-clicking on it could produce a window with options - like a Full System Scan; I know it does just that with all antivirus-softwares I have ever worked with.

I couldn't find any info on such a virus by googling it so I cannot give you any particular assistance. Maybe just this: Shouldn't avast! recognize it, try a different scanner (like Avira Antivir: http://www.free-av.de/). Also, you may want to run Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/nl/index.html) and/or Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoft.de/) - both free.

One of these should usually help... if not, please let us know more about your OS and the symptoms.

Best wishes, good luck,
Wolfgang.

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EDIT: Geoff beat me to it regarding the avast-scan. /
(regarding rinkuhero's post): Do you use an extra keyboard/mouse with the laptop or "just" the integrated keyboard and touchscreen/trackball? Does your keyboard have programmable keys and/or a specific "back" key?

[wthepoo]

Oh, Tatiana, one "idea" for allowing you to surf using the laptop:

Instead of simply clicking on links, right-click and open the link in a new tab or window.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang.