Need Advice, removing 180solution.zango from parent's comp.

[BigDon]

Yeah, its hooked into my parents pc. None of the tricks I know worked. Can anybody help? Didn't want to add yet another anti-adware program to the ones that I put on already and was wondering if there was a fix somewhere.

Parents are running XP on their machine. I made a bunch of upgrades and added zonealarm, ad-aware and spybot search and destroy. And the stuff still keeps writing itself back on.

Thank you

BD

[Moose]

Have you turned off XP's system restore? That could well be how the malware is reappearing. I've had that happen to a friend. Virus kept returning each reboot, no matter how many times the virus checker killed it.

[captain swoop]

Restart in Safe mode with networking, go to www.trendmicro.com and run the free virus/adware removal software, it works every time and its free

[Nicholas_Bostaph]

If I'm not mistaken, this is the spyware that runs several processes in the background under randomly generated names. If you delete the folder from the hard drive, one of the running processes detects that and recreates it. If you terminate any process, one of the other processes restarts it under yet another gibberish name. The processes still automatically start even in safe mode. Does that sound right?

I believe I removed this on my Win2000 PC by running a program in the background to consume 100% of my processor usage. This prevented the spyware processes from keeping up as I terminated them manually. Once gone, the files on the hard drive can be deleted. There may be a better way, but this is what worked for me.

Note that there is a download available directly from the 1800solutions web site. If nothing else is working it might be worth a try as you are already infected. It is a bit risky though.

[BigDon]

Thanks Nick, I'm going to give Capt. Swoop's suggestion a try first though. Seems a little more straight forward. Moose thanks for the input. You're number two only because I'm not sure how to turn off XP's system restore.

BD

[Cylinder]

Thanks Nick, I'm going to give Capt. Swoop's suggestion a try first though. Seems a little more straight forward. Moose thanks for the input. You're number two only because I'm not sure how to turn off XP's system restore.

BD

1. Right-click MY COMPUTER->Choose PROPERTIES

2. Click SYSTEM RESTORE tab.

or

1. Open MY COMPUTER->CONTROL PANEL

2. Click SWITCH TO CLASSIC VIEW in left-hand frame

3. Open SYSTEM applet

4. Choose SYSTEM RESTORE tab.

[Avatar28]

I doubt that will get rid of it, but turning off system restore needs to be done. Two programs should be in your arsenal. First, install spysweeper. I would suggest http://www.webroot.com/dell as that will give you a fully functional 30 day trial (most of the demo vers won't remove, only scan) or purchase the full version for $30 from http://www.webroot.com. Spy Sweeper in most reviews is at or near the top of the list and the shields are quite excellent (note that the newest version may have some issues with McAfee).

The other program you want to get is Ewido Antimalware. They recently came out with a 4.0 version that is really good.
http://www.ewido.net
The two together work excellent. Note that Ewido will work best if you scan with it from safe mode.

Of the two, Spy Sweeper will give you the better real time protection and does a truly EXCELLENT job at keeping these things from getting on the system (or reinstalling themselves) in the first place.

There are also several forums dedicated to spyware removal. Do a search for 180solutions removal in google and you will find a lot of them. Many of them will instruct you to run a log with Hijack This (http://tinyurl.com/yslp) to help remove any remaining bits that might be contributing to the programs reloading themselves.