ms anti virus - help

[merlin]

Hi,

Not exactly a computer whizz, so please bear with me.

Have a relatively old computer with an old Norton Anti-virus and have never got around to downloading Service Pack 2 due to fear of loosing saved bits such as photos etc.

Recently the MS Vircus scan pops up every so often , have never knowingly downloaded anything to do with it - is more annoying - but obiousley dont want to to infect anything. However in the last few days our ( again out of date) ab-subtract software is going a bit mad and i think it is causing the bottom task bar to keep disappering.... not 100% it is to blame though !!

Will i have to buy a anti virus sytem ie: Norton, McPhee to stop the MS antivirus or can I do something myself ?

Any ideas ref: the disapearing taskbar?

Thanks in advance :)

Merlin

[gus]

Think you have a virus mate!! MS antivirus sounds like a virus in its self
Would get those photos backed up along with anything else important before you loose the lot. Do that now before you tackle the virus.
Good luck

[system7]

This is what I would call an INTERESTING problem, merlin. :P

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/2660/msantivirus2008wd7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

You don't think it's funny, of course. A quick google reveals that MS Antivirus 2008 is one of those bogus programs that install themselves from websites, when you think you are simply updating a Windows component to view a file. It masquerades as an official looking Antivirus program that claims to have detected a virus infection, and probably offers to cure it on receipt of your money. It relies on your ignorance of such things.

Don't worry. It's just your regular type of badly written Trojan that crashes your computer and taskbar. You have 3 choices, apart from sending money to these people, or buying Norton or such, which are not really designed to deal with trojans and spyware. Gus is right, that the best thing is to first backup your files to CD-R, then do one of the following:

1) You run a free more reputable program called SuperAntiSpyware:
http://www.superantispyware.com/index.html
2) You manually stop the two running processes, delete the registry key and delete the program files. Help here:
http://webtoolsandtips.com/remove-spyware/how-to-remove-msa-ms-antivirus-2008-uninstall-msscanner-com/
http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-ms-antivirus-2008.html
Do not download any other programs here, you can't trust any of them, as you have learned.
3) You reinstall Windows, update to SP3 and in future use a secure modern browser like Firefox and free malware detecting firewall like Comodo, or AVG free edition and maybe free Spybot and HijackThis to monitor things.