firewall

[AcdQueen89]

so last night my firewall decided to expire without warning. i immediately was given note that i had roughly 30 viruses and to deal with said viruses i had to fork over cash. i've got vista, i'm not surprised. however, when i finally got the damn thing to let me see and attempt to process what sorts of viruses there were i found that there's a bank/credit thefting one that attached itself to ie. being microsoft the only way they're letting me reactivate is through ie.

does anyone know how i can force the program to tell me where the virus is located so i can at least get rid of it before i decide on reactivating the firewall?

[Swash]

It's not a firewall, but you might find that Avast Antivirus helps you get things cleaned up at least.
It's a free one, and assuming none of the virii you have are changing URL's to dodgy sites you should be able to download it from http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download - as a check, that url should say avast dot com free dash antivirus dash download.

What firewall were you using?  If it went down without warning I'm not so certain it expired - those things normally give you a month or so of "Your subscription to ExpensiveFirewall will expire in X days.  To avoid interruption to service, renew your subscription." windows that have to be closed before you can get on with anything else.

My best guess is a bit of ransomware has disabled the firewall or even just started claiming that the firewall has expired in an attempt to trick you into paying for their dodgy service.

[AcdQueen89]

it's saying that it's a vista firewall and as far as i can tell it's the legitmate program. i've been using a school computer, i'll give an update when i can get stuff dl'd



!@%$^$#%#$^Y#$^
avast will install, but wont run. all the shields are disabled and wont enable. it took me three tries to download it, the first two ended in bsod. its starting to look like i'll actually have to take it in on monday to get everything looked at. unless someone else has any advice?

[Swash]

Try http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
It's an online-hosted virus scan.  It'll tell you where the virii are located, though it won't be able to automatically remove them.  Once you know what the virus is and where it is though, you can try to get rid of it.  Some of them will automatically copy to a new location when you delete the old one though.

Going to Start>Run and using msconfig will allow you to disable specific startup programs.  That may help you get rid of some of the virii as well.  To remove them from that list outright though will require messing with the registry though, which can be time consuming, especially on a multi-user computer.

I've had to clean up a few computers using housecall and msconfig though and it IS possible in most cases but it's very time consuming.

[AcdQueen89]

i think i got it working right, thanks swash. i realized i didnt have spybot, it turned out to be the only thing that would actually run a scan.