76,000 viruses.... how likely?

[Disgruntled]

I have recently had some cpu performance slowdown, nothing major, just some lagging here and there. My wife ran an online scan on her friends advice. It was called housecalls by some company I cant think of offhand.
    So the scan takes 6 hours and says of the 94000 files scanned there are 76000 viruses or infected files. It said they were uncleanable. I scanned with AVG and none of them showed up.
    While it was scanning the files I caught most of the names and location. They were all porn names and in zip files. I know 100% I did not ever view or download these 76000 porn zips just by some of the titles. They were also in alphabetical order.
    I searched for these files in windows explorer, but none showed up. The location during the scan was Documents and Settings/ complete/. I searched high and lo for these files but they are not readily found thru the regular search methods. Even if I search for " zip. "[ which was in every title ] none of them show up.
    I used BC wipe to clean my slack files and freespace and it showed all of these files as it scanned. I checked my freespace and still only have 8 gigs free, so it did not wipe them.
   Anyone have any thoughts? please help.....

[cymon]

You can try the MS solution, Format & Reinstall, or the MSuck solution, which is format and install linux.

Oh and for future refrence, this is not a goddamn Windows help forum.  I really don't see what's so hard about this, it's microsuck.com after all.

[Orethrius]

Besides, you've been initiated into the wonderful world of "pop-up scan" scams that comes with your ownership of Windows.  It's rather funny when you see those little panes appear on non-Microsoft systems, telling you how "Windows" has been compromised (even on a VAX).  I'm guessing that you want to retain your legitimate files until such a time as you can get off of Windows for good, so the best advice I can give you is to run SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard (JavaCoolSoftware), Ad-Aware (LavaSoft), and Spybot (Spybot.info) to remove the majority of the spyware those "scans" likely left behind.  After taking those initial steps, consider switching to Linux, BSD, BeOS Dev - or take your continued issues to http://www.windowsbbs.com.

[Pathos]

do you know the exact path to any of the supposably infected files ?

The only way you wont be able to see them if they are there is if a rootkit is installed.

boot up knoppix, mount the drive and then you can see every file whether windows hides it or not. If it exists you have a problem ...

[solemnwarning]

Besides, you've been initiated into the wonderful world of "pop-up scan" scams that comes with your ownership of Windows.  It's rather funny when you see those little panes appear on non-Microsoft systems, telling you how "Windows" has been compromised (even on a VAX).  I'm guessing that you want to retain your legitimate files until such a time as you can get off of Windows for good, so the best advice I can give you is to run SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard (JavaCoolSoftware), Ad-Aware (LavaSoft), and Spybot (Spybot.info) to remove the majority of the spyware those "scans" likely left behind.  After taking those initial steps, consider switching to Linux, BSD, BeOS Dev - or take your continued issues to http://www.windowsbbs.com.

Yeah, btw according to some ads and popups my non-existant winshite xp install needs spyware scanning and registery fixing

[Aloone_Jonez]

If you don't want to switch to an alternative OS like Linux then at least try s decent browser like Opera or Firefox (online scanners won't work with decent browsers). Whatever you do not use any of those online scanners they could infect your PC with all kinds of crap, I'm even concerned that you may've been infected with a rootkit so download and run RooekitRevealer then some decent anti-malware software like Orethrius suggested.

[piratePenguin]

Oh and for future refrence, this is not a goddamn Windows help forum.  I really don't see what's so hard about this, it's microsuck.com after all.

Some people just don't know the difference between "suck" and "soft". They confuse "software" for "suckware", and that's why they use Windows to power their machines.

Everybody knows that :p

[ReggieMicheals]

Backup your data, reformat, and reinstall. Afterwards make a limited user account, install spybot and an antivirus of your choice, then install Mozilla Firefox or Opera.

[mobrien_12]

Backup your data, reformat, and reinstall. Afterwards make a limited user account, install spybot and an antivirus of your choice, then install Mozilla Firefox or Opera.

The implication is to continue to use Windows with more security.

If you are going to go to the trouble of formatting and reinstalling, why not set up a dual boot system with Linux and find out what you have been missing.

[davidnix71]

How big is your hd? 76k porn flicks would be quite a collection (not that I would know first hand, mind you  ). If you are using a file share program, maybe you do have lots of parts of porn in transit in the share cache.

[Aloone_Jonez]

The implication is to continue to use Windows with more security.

Which is the next best thing to changing to an alternative, come on don't bitch he at least did mention switching to a non-M$ browser. :rolleyes:

[piratePenguin]

Backup your data, reformat, and reinstall. Afterwards make a limited user account, install spybot and an antivirus of your choice, then install Mozilla Firefox or Opera.

If he copies his data back onto the new installation, then he might fuck up the new installation too.

The infected files no doubt won't affect a GNU/Linux install I recommend ubuntu if you wanna go that route.

If you're sticking with windows, definetly DO NOT use Internet Explorer to browse the web - use one of the brilliant alternatives Firefox or Opera (or both).

And like Reggie said, setup and use a limited user account for your daily tasks - if you went the GNU/Linux way this would be piss easy because it has sane, secure defaults unlike Windows.

[mobrien_12]

Which is the next best thing to changing to an alternative, come on don't bitch he at least did mention switching to a non-M$ browser. :rolleyes:

I'm not bitching.  You only quoted half my post.  The important part was in the second half.

If you are going to go the the trouble of wiping your hard disk and reinstalling everything, why not make your system a dual boot with Linux?  

The Linux install is trivial compared to the pain and time of a Windows  install.

[Aloone_Jonez]

The Linux install is trivial compared to the pain and time of a Windows  install.

I wish people would stop comparing how easy/hard it is to install Windows/Linux, the truth is it varies a lot, it mainly depends on your hardware.

[piratePenguin]

The Windows installer doesn't take into account what's already on the MBR - it just overwrites it with it's own shitty bootloader. I don't know of anything more painful to noobies.

And with Windows you usually have to get and install the manufacturer's driver to alot of hardware because the drivers that come with it are plain shit. GNU/Linux distros that try to be noob-friendly usually contain all the free drivers and the hardware just works. Then when you go to update the software the drivers are updated too - unlike in Windows when if you wanna update a loada software you gotta jump between a loada websites and individually install everything, and reboot.

Only thing is some fuckhead-manufacturers either don't release drivers/software for GNU/Linux or when they do, they release them under a shitty license that forbids distributors to distribute them, so the user has to manually install them and these usually take longer than in Windows.

Blah.