Being attacked by Virus/Trojans...Need help!

So I downloaded a music album from an mp3 blogspot blog, assuming that because it was an LP rip of Russian folk music there would be little danger of viruses. Upon extracting it with winRAR however, all sorts of windows immediately begin popping up. My free-version of ZoneAlarm begins alerting me that the following are trying to access the trusted zone and the internet:

a.exe
wpv951227747989.cpx
wavvsnet.exe
xpre.exe
snapsnet.exe
wavvsnet.tmp
snapsnet.tmp
xpre.tmp
C80L0N1.exe
E5MTDg4.exe
webHancer
prunnet.exe

I deny them all, but windows explorer (which I never use...currently on Firefox) suddenly starts opening a ton of browser pages (all loud ads)...at this very moment they're still coming up. To start, I began trying to figure out what's going on by looking up a.exe online and found that if its in my win32 folder it's likely malware. No surprise, it's in my win32 folder.

I'm not security savvy at all, obviously, and am therefore not sure what to do next. Do I try to remove all this one by one, and if so how? I fear there are other exe programs that I would miss. Is there a safe way to scrub my computer free without having to re-install XP? This is quite overwhelming and any advice would be appreciated! Thank you in advance.

 

Try restart into safemode? and run Ad-aware or Spybot or some malware fixing program. There are two stickies that can help you.

 

Which program is most commonly endorsed by users on this forum? (I remember a couple of years ago I downloaded one of these malware fixing programs and a false identification froze my computer until I could have a knowledgeable friend fix things.)

Or would it help to download both or several of such programs and to run each of them? Although I seem to recall that they can end up attacking each other. Online I also see enthusiasm for the following: CCleaner, SpywareBlaster, and Windows Defender.

Would it help to download one of those programs and then just run them? Is restarting necessary?

 

Last time, I just downloaded all the programs from the page and ran them consecutively..... (I got a virus that changed my background to a page that said "You have a virus" and didn't let me change it back)

 

This may only help you in the future, but you should probably scan the the .rar download before extracting anything. That will save you from attacks such as what you described.

Like Namaiki said, just download all of the free programs and run them consecutively. That should eliminate the problem.

 

I'm going to now go over those links and work from them.

I'm curious as to why I can't find some of the exe programs that are attacking me do not show up online. For example, Zonealarm warns that E5MTDg4.exe is trying to access the internet. When I google E5MTDg4.exe, I find nothing. Whereas I immediately found references to a.exe, there's nothing for E5MTDg4.exe or a few others that are showing up. Would this prohibit the recommended spyware and anti-virus programs from finding such obscure or unknown malware on my system?

 

There are some annoying ones that generate a random name on every rerun.

It might be faster to do a reinstall of windows especially if your computer has a recovery partition. Also, back up your files if you are going to anything drastic.

You could also try System Restore.

 

That makes sense. I suspected as much. Are the av programs usually able to successfully find them in spite of this?

 

Are you currently using any anti-virus or anti-spyware programs on top of your firewall? If not, here are some suggestions for removing your malware.

MalwareBytes: Impressive, free anti-malware program, excellent for detecting and removing rogues and other often frustrating malware.
SUPERAntiSpyware: Another good anti-malware program, good for cleaning up any traces malwarebytes leaves behind.

Avira AntiVir: One of the top free anti-virus programs out there along with others such as Avast. High virus detection rate.

Best of luck for resolving your problems!

 

I'd try malwarebytes antimalware first, then superantispyware. Once you do that if you don't have an anti virus try avira antivir. All are free and should take care of the problem.

Argh, snipe by smoothtofu. Great minds think alike, some just type faster than others!

 

I considered this. I think I'm going to try the suggested programs first. Long-term, I probably could use a re-install anyway...but I will need to buy an external hard-drive to transfer all my files while doing so. Which raises the question: Is it possible or probably that any of this malware could or would infect any of my MyDocuments files (Word files, for instance, Music, and so forth)? I'm basically wondering if I transfer all of my files to an external hard drive while re-installing windows, will or could those files subsequently infect my new installation.

 

not so related anymore, but what I did last time is find all instances of the malicious programs on the hard drive and rename the .exe files (of the ones you are sure) and go to the registry and delete the links to the malicious programs so that they don't automatically start up when Windows is loaded..

But this is kind of going into 'RAGE! and why is this happening to me?' territory.

Also, if you delete the wrong files, Windows might not load the next time you restart your computer.

 

With the exception of Zonealarm, I'm ashamed to say I'm not.

I used to run comodo and ad-aware, but the former seemed to slow my computer down considerably and a false identification in the latter caused by computer to freeze. So I suppose I was foolishly turned away from such programs.

Thanks for the recs! And thanks to all so far!

 

This is exactly what happened to me before! I fear I could do that again, so I will have to be rather conservative here. Thanks for taking the time...very much appreciated.

 

I believe it wasn't the .rar file, extracting a .rar archive doesn't run the files inside of it automatically even if there are viruses.

 

Try AVG Free.

If it doesnt work, i suggest you do a fresh Vista re-install.

Then buy Norton Internet Security 2009.

 

I used to run NOD32, and thought it was a great product, but thought again, why pay when you can get as good for free?

Same goes for NIS.

 

I doubt that Free AV and paid AV compare the same. A product you pay for usually performs better. Unless im wrong, and please provide me some links to comparasons.

 

Links for comparative tests are at the bottom of this page

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2692601&postcount=1

 

Ok, thanks.

Ill check it out.