OT: Microsoft is really annoying

[Wilhelm Sanke]

On Wed Apr 21, 2010; Bob Sneidar bobs at twft.com wrote:


> Hi Wilhelm.
>
> (snip). So it does not surprise me that your visiting a reputable site 
> resulted in an infection. What DOES surprise me is that your antivirus 
> (assuming it is up to date) did not catch it. Perhaps this happened 
> before you installed the antivirus?
>
> The hsyfea.exe looks like a random file name, which was typical of a 
> particularly nasty bit of malware I came across a while back called 
> coolwebsearch. The installer installed several variants of itself 
> using random file names, which required a program called HijackThis 
> and a series of safe boots to remove the hijacker. Even then, with 
> some flavors of the "adware" you never got all the pieces, and the 
> recommendation at that point was a clean reinstall.
>
> The other one turned up some interesting google hits. I believe this 
> to be a particularly nasty one, but if your Antivirus found it, then 
> it should have prevented it, unless as I said, you got it before you 
> installed Antivirus. If you got it first, then there is a possibility 
> it installed a rootkit, in which case nothing but a wipe and reinstall 
> to a new partition, and to be safe, a reset of the CMOS first, will 
> guarantee it's removal.
>
> My condolences.
>
> Bob


Hi Bob,

Again, thanks for your feedback and your condolences!

My Antivirus had been in place *before* my computer was infected. The 
software had been installed by an IT-competent colleague, but - as I 
understand now - set to a medium scan level to prevent too much delay on 
startup of the computer. I had changed the scan level to "high" after I 
had experienced the constantly appearing ads and subsequently found the 
two viruses.

Two findings concerning the Internet Explorer on my WindowsXP machine, 
which cannot be removed, but apparently somehow deactivated by 
transferring a number of movable supporting files to another folder:

- IE  can no longer be started even if you click directly on the exe-file.

- There have been no automatic updates of WindowsXP since I have 
deactivated the Internet Explorer, which could mean that IE plays a role 
in the update process.

Best regards,

Wilhelm