Expert: Lorry - 4/16/2009

Question
QUESTION: My wife may have accidentally had a pop up prompting her to run a scan for virus and clicked on it and now we constantly have a box popping up telling us we need to scan for virus and there is also now a shortcut for personal antivirus on our desktop.  I want to completely remove it and dont even see it anywhere in our list of programs.  We have vista and have mcaffe internet security and just a couple days ago I installed adaware free version which I have used in past with no problems and it has free realtime protection as well.  Its strange that we suddenly have this pop up just a couple days after installing adaware.  I am reluctant to do any online banking or anything until I know the pc is clean.  Will adaware or mcaffee completely remove it?  Why does it not show up in the remove programs folder?

ANSWER: Hi James,

Even though you McAfee installed, using Internet Explorer, go to:

http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/WelcomePage.asp

Click "Continue to Symantec Security Check", in the next window click No when asked if you want to close this window, that will bring you to a window where you should click Virus Detection.

Write down exactly anything it finds, then go to: http://www.symantec.com/search/  and do a search for what was found. Symantec usually has a removal tool and/or directions for removing manually. Make sure that you follow the instructions for removal, step by step, especially the part regarding disabling System Restore.

I would also suggest downloading Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.36 from:

http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html

Hope this helps!
Lorry

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I actually did use that malwarebytes antimalware and it seems to have removed it.  Should I still go to symantec?

Answer
Hi James,

It couldn't hurt. Since you would be running the scan from the Symantec site, you know that it is up to date.

Even though I use Norton Anti-Virus on this machine, I usually run a scan from the Symantec site every 4 to 6 weeks, basically to verify that my PC is safe. Reason being, let's say Norton just updated my protection yesterday and today I got a virus/threat to day that wasn't included in the latest update of protection, I won't know there was a threat until I run a scan. Many viruses will and/or can stop the on board AV program from getting new updates.

Running the free scan from Symantec scan will take some time, so run it when you don't need to do anything else on the computer for awhile.

Hope this helps!
Lorry