Expert: Brian Benosky - 6/22/2009

Question
My laptop with Vista picked up the "personal anti virus".  It won't go to trendsecure as you requested.
I tried regedit, but couldn't find the listed strings.
Can we still do something about this?

Answer
Hi Tom

Try booting into safe mode.  After pressing the power button, continuously tap the F8 key until a black screen with a menu appears.  Choose to boot Vista into Safe Mode With Networking, then log on as usual.  Then open up a browser and continue with the instructions below:

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware to your desktop from here:

http://www.besttechie.net/tools/mbam-setup.exe

Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
* At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
o Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
* then click Finish.
* If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version.
*Run a Full Scan.
* When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
* Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
* When completed, a log will open in Notepad.  Save that log and reboot normally.

Download and install HijackThis:

http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/_download/HJTInstall.exe

Make sure you close EVERY open window and ALL browser windows. The only thing that should be open is the HijackThis program.
Double-click on the file you just downloaded.
Click on the "Install" button.
Upon install, HijackThis should open for you.
Should it not open, go to C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\HijackThis and double click on HijackThis.exe
Choose 'Do a system scan and save a log file'.
Copy the text file which opens in Notepad and paste it in your follow-up, along with the Malwarebytes log.
* Do not fix any entries in HijackThis, as they may be harmless.

If that still does not work, I can send you the files via email.  My address is numbersix6@yahoo.com.

Brian