FIGHTING BACK! - COMPUTER MALWARE

Our youngest son, also known as our Tech Help for computer problems, believes in Tough Love. When one of our computers started to slow down and act stupid, we turned to him.

"It's slow," I emailed him.
"I need more information than, 'It's slow,'" he replied.
"It became slow, constantly 'loading' and then it became difficult to connect with the internet. Then it stopped connecting with the internet entirely."

We have three computers, and my husband's computer was the sickest of all three.

My son gave me three sites to download for free anti-virus and spyware software: AVG, Avanti, and Spybot. "Try these and if they don't work, I'll check out the computers," he emailed back.

I hate being dependent on anyone. I've hated this reversal of roles where we, the parents, have to ask our sons how to operate computers and these new-fangled machines. So, the other night, I worked on this problem, staying up until 3 a.m.

First, I decided to diagnose the problem. Using the computer that was still functioning, I googled phrases like: computer slow spyware, computer not connecting internet. There were numerous sites with other people complaining about the same problems. Some said the problem could be caused by spyware, some said, a virus.

I checked for solutions. There were many suggestions to do a Systems Restore. I googled, "Systems Restore" and felt assured that it couldn't damage the computer.

It's amazing what you can learn from the internet. I learned to click on programs, accessories, systems tools, then systems restore. Assured that this action was reversible, I bravely clicked on an arrow on the calendar and moved back in time the systems-brain. My understanding was that if the virus was picked up a couple of days ago, if I go back a week when the computer didn't have a virus, I could restore that functioning brain.

OK - I did that to all three computers. But - lo - this didn't help. I did a second systems restore, and still the computers were becoming more and more demented. One could no longer connect with the internet.

Some of the Google suggestions was to use an anti-virus programs, as my son had suggested. I tried to download the programs suggested by my son. I got one computer to download AVG, and when I ran the anti-virus program, found that the machine had over 400 Spyware! I felt some satisfaction deleting Ad-ware and all that crap. The thought that these insidious little spies live in your computer and keep track of everything you are doing and are reporting back to their Evil Masters is absolutely infuriating.

The one computer couldn't connect with the internet, so I couldn't even download anything on that one. I did a triage and set that aside. I had to save what I could.

The second computer had to be tricked to be able to connect with the internet. When I tried to connect, I'd get a message that there was no internet connection, but if I actually typed in the url, it would connect. However, when I got to the anti-virus programs, the computer couldn't download the free program. It was caught in la-la land just downloading forever.

I decided that if the doctor couldn't come to the patient, maybe I could get long-distance help. I found out about Trend Micro Housecall, where their program can diagnose and heal your computer. I was able to connect to Housecall and this got rid of some spyware and cookies. Afterwards, the machine seemed better, well enough so we could download the Avanti anti-virus free program, which my other son swears is the best. We ran the Avanti and discovered the machine had a Trojan virus hiding in a music file! Troj_caiinj - hateful, sneaky virus, screwing up my computer! Got rid of that.

With the help of two sons, we got the two computers more or less back to normal. (The husband wasn't much help; he just pushed the same buttons over and over and fretted that his computer wouldn't connect with the internet.) The third computer is still sick, in deep malaise. Using a disc we were able to run an anti-virus program, which said it had no virus. We ran Spybot to check for spyware - some infections were cleaned up. But it still would not connect properly, and was extremely slow. My sons were wondering if it was a connection problem. But why would the other two computers connect properly? On and on the discussion went - TCP/IP, ping, etc. The sons kept asking for the password for the router. The husband said there was no password. The sons insisted there had to be a password. The husband found a piece of paper that the Verizon man had given him - with the password. "DAaaadddd...." the boys went.

Not wanting to spend hours with strung-out parents, our Tech Help picked up the sick computer and it's now with him, in ICU, so to speak. I'm sure he'll get it fixed. Meantime, I'm crossing my fingers that the other two computers really are healed.