Hopefully this won't happen to you guys, but it happened to me. First thing I noticed was a redirect bug in Firefox/Google search. It may be unrelated, but eventually led to a bigger problem. Sometimes I click on a search result and it redirects me to a different site. Annoying, but I can click BACK and then reclick and it goes where I intended. But today it happened and it redirected me to a blank page and downloaded something to my computer. Immediately afterward my browser crashed. Long story short a virus/malware program called "Vista Anti-Virus 2010" re-wrote registry entries for my browsers, causing it to open itself instead. The program poses as a Spyware removal program, telling you that your firewall is off and your computer is at risk, it does a fake scan and tells you off all kinds of threats. Basically, if you didn't install the program that is scanning your computer, then it is fake, regardless of whether is appears to be a windows product. I was able to remove the registry entries that hijacked my browsers, and am still trying to find the location of the root exe file. It has changed a lot of other crap as well. It pretty much tries to overide any program i start with the intention of fixing my pc. It tried to stop me from reinstalling spyware doctor. tried to stop me from opening the registry editor, but i found a way around all of that. If you run into this problem, let me know, I can help you get through it. It wasn't easy for me, but I've got functioning browsers again, and I've kept the program from launching for over 30 minutes now. Hopefully its dead.
This is a common tactic that will affect both Macs and PCs. If I were you, I'd save you what you can from your hard drive and reformat. I think Windows has a way to go back to a past "image" of the OS that would work as well.
I have all my stuff backed up on a portable HD. Ive had issues with this PC for a while now. I'll have a new PC soon, just need to get by for another month or so till it gets here.
Did you try removing it in safe mode? Do you have the uac option turned on in windows vista (im assuming you have vista) .
safe mode was no help. it operated the same. yes i have vista. im not sur ewhat all the uac effects, but im now having to run most programs as administrator because they are saying the exe file isnt assosiated with any program.
I've run into this problem twice at least the fake program part. I just used Malwarebytes and it seemed to do the trick. This only issue I had was eventually once this fake program started running you couldn't open up Malwarebytes so I would reboot and run it as soon as possible.
Yeah this happened to me a while ago. Luckily I had a dual boot Linux/windows, It disappears for a while then comes back if you don't strike back quickly and eliminate it. I ended up just reinstalling windows because it will mess with your saved back ups. That "vista-suite" virus comes up with a new name every year but it does the same thing. When it first tries to "download" hit crtl shift esc fast to get up task manager before it disables it, then end all unknown processes. I recently got avast!, and it kicks arse all day w/out bogging down your system. Definatley get more powerful protection for your new pc to be safe. Or run a virtual machine when your watching ughh.. graphic content.