Wotcha kind folk of STW,
I’m round the parents’ house for xmas, and their clunky old PC seems to have a “srchz” virus on it (there’s always a sodding virus, no matter how much I beef up the protection when i pop over). Has anyone a decent idiot’s guide to how I can get shot of it? I’m not familiar with any of the sites about it that google throws up, so i’m wary of just downloading any old thing. Is this sortable with spybot or somesuch, as i get out of my depth rather quickly after that.

Cheers for any help – this computer’s so slow i had breakfast whilst waiting for the GIFs thread to load this morning, so proper answer hunting through the web’ll take all day.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Download and run this

Install this http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/pc-security/mse.aspx

malware malbytes will help remove various things

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

presumably there is some sort of virus scanner running? If not AVG free or something will help…

a controversial/contentious and long term solution is to install linux

They’ve got AVG on here, just finished a scan without showing anything. Downloading malwarebytes now (at walking speed), so hopefully that’ll show something up. Some of the bumf I read on the virus made it sound a complicated fix- so wondered whether it was more technical than one of these programmes alone could handle. hopefully not.

thanks for the help – will update with more thanks or whinging later

restore point?

To be frank the best option is to remove hd, replace and reinstall windows, do all updates then connect old hd via a usb caddy and scan that. You can never trust an infected os again.

Try a system restore first.

Run Malwarebytes as above.

Check DNS settings, reset browser defaults as per other browser hijacks.

Try an online scane with ESET: http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/

You’ve been looking at too much dwarf porn, again!

any ideas 🙄 Yeah buy an Apple ❗ ➡

You’ve been looking at too much dwarf porn, again!

considering the filth that’s passed through my PC without turning it manky, I dread to think what this one’s seen…
-mustnotchecktempfilesmustnotchecktempfilesmustnotchecktempfiles-

Malware found a few bits but hasn’t cleared it, comodo won’t boot up for some reason (error from themes/default.set). trying ESET now, then’ll follow through with Cougar’s other suggestions (thanks).

When you get it working, maybe worth setting up a non-admin user for normal use, this should help reduce the amount of crap that gets installed. (Depends on what version of Windows you have, may not be worth it if it’s old.)

That’s a good idea, i’ve an inkling there’s far too much spam email and the suchlike being naively opened. It’s going on the list.

Also download this one to clean out all the junks.

ccleaner – slim

Hi all, just to update – this stubborn little bastard won’t shift (avg, malwarebites, spybot, ccleaner, mse, eset, switching to opendns haven’t caught it). according to some googling, this Srchz thingummyjig is too evasive for such sweeps and needs doing manually. Which i can’t be arsed trying/failing to do on xmas evening, so it’ll wait for tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice anyhow – it seems “someone on the internet says” carries quite a bit of weight when i’m explaining what i’ll try next – so that’s made things easier at least.

Beer and Trollhunter for me,
merry xmas all

Visit the forums at bleeping computer.com. Start off in the “am I infected” forum. Someone there will be able to help you. They were great when I had to get rid of ZeroAccess RootKit.

^ ace, thanks. i’ll give it a try in the morning.