Our courts paper service computer got hit with a VERY nasty virus. Had to replace the 'puter! Here it is in a nutshell:

Something will come on your screen like "Windows XP restore"

AS FAST AS YOU CAN HOLD DOWN THE ON/OFF SWITCH UNTIL YOUR COMPUTER GOES OFF!

IF you get a dark screen and it starts saying something about "C drive error" or something like that YOUR HARD DRIVE IS FRIED AND CAN NOT BE REFORMATTED/REPAIRED IN ANY WAY.

Supposedly Norton has a fix for this but I am not 100 percent sure.

PLAY IT SAFE. IF you get something like this check with a computer pro!

Thanks for the warning. I updated my Virus protection just in case.

my girlfriend got this on her computer once, what it does it shuts your comp off then when you log in it'll take that password and use it to change your settings to not view hidden items, then it'll change all your items to hidden (so they dont show) then it says your harddrives broken and "all your data is gone" and tries to charge you $$$ to fix it. If you pay for it, it goes away.

Good luck running norton, it'll probably boot you out of it if you logged in and gave it your password.

A way to fix it:

If you have dual-boot or partition on your HD, just run malwarebytes scan on the partition, otherwise mount the drive to another computer and run a scan through that, you will have about a 0.01% chance of getting a successful scan on the infected drive

(a lot of computers you can just mount as a "external storage" then you can scan it.. just look up what your mobo startup key is to put it in storage mode, or if you have the knowledge (pretty easy) just remove the hard drive and directly mount it on a diff computer (this is what i did)

Thats sometimes the only way. But its way above the novice.

That sounds like a nasty virus. I wonder if its running the exe through java script or active x and if it requires interaction. A lot of time the whole pop up is a button. I tell people to CTRL-SHIFT-ESC and kill the task in task manager (I don't like to use CTRL-ALT-DEL). Now everytime my wife gets a pop up that says. "YOUR INFECTED, or CLICK HERE TO RUN VIRUS SCAN" she stops and calls me to stop it before it starts.

Viruses are a tricky thing and as soon as we find ways around them someone makes up a new way to trick you.

Randy, I forgot to say thanks for the warning. Thats a good catch and its always a good thing when people share this kind of info, because most people and businesses don't have a active backup plan.

+1 Amigo.

ZOOG, from what I understand this is a BRAND NEW rendition. Supposedly Norton itself says that the hard drive, once the infection takes hold is totally fried.

avast is a good early warning anti virus system, however it doesn't always stop viruses. malwarebytes is a must to have and pays to use it and update it regularly. superantispyware is must always too.

things like this made me new customers. My current customers were schooled better.

Any business without a backup solution doesn't have a good IT guy/company.

+1 malwarebytes

I'll be sure to tell all of the PC owners I know that there is another virus out there. My mom managed to get one on my dad's laptop. Not cool... I'm glad I made the switch to Mac.

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malware is now hitting macs, and apple said they won't help if you get a virus.

Hey B52, how you doin? Long time no type.