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    spyware and viruses

    Discussion in 'Security and Anti-Virus Software' started by yaganon, Apr 14, 2012.

  1. yaganon

    yaganon Notebook Geek

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    I run W7, and I have MSE to protect my computer. Just today, I downloaded this video converter from this website ( http://www.flveditor.net/index.html). I was trying to find a free converter, and was complete oblivious on how shady this website looked. Anyways, I downloaded the download file, ran it, and nothing happened. So I was like meh.. Then, when I tried to play a video on youtube, my computer crashed into this blue screen with white text and with a 'dumping memory' % message at the bottom.

    I restarted my computer and deleted the download file. My computer seems to be fine now. Is there a way to make sure of that?
     
  2. MrDJ

    MrDJ Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    if it was actually a virus and as youve given it permission by downloading it then even after removing it it could be too late as viruses are very clever and spread.
    if mse didnt pick it up then it might be worth trying another antivirus like avast (only have 1 loaded at a time).
    also download malwarebytes and run a scan with that. might be worth running in safe mode so reboot and keep pressing F8 on startup
     
  3. yaganon

    yaganon Notebook Geek

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    I scanned it with malwarebytes. it took 1.5 hrs and it didn't find anything

    mse removed an 'adware'
     
  4. JOSEA

    JOSEA NONE

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  5. Deks

    Deks Notebook Prophet

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    Lol...
    I suffered the same failure on my laptop at least on 2 or 3 rare occasion.
    There was no evidence a virus was responsible in either case... rather that it was down to a hardware problem (probably HDD or RAM related) which snuffed out Windows 7 and forced it to dump the memory and then reset itself.
    Other than those 3 separate incidents, my laptop works fine, as do Windows.

    To that end, I don't think there's any credible evidence this was a work of a virus.
     
  6. Sanage

    Sanage Notebook Enthusiast

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    :(
    It's annoying that free tools always come together with adware.
    Sometimes even spyware.
     
  7. Deks

    Deks Notebook Prophet

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    Generalize much?
    I would classify 'always' as an inaccurate term.
    Free (open source) tools CAN come with adware or even spyware, however, the quality ones don't (at least they didn't as far as I was able to tell).

    Examples include LibreOffice (an offshot of OpenOffice), CCleaner, MSE, GimpShop, Windows 7 Shark Codecs and VirtualDub (there are probably more, but these are just of the top of my head).
     
  8. w3ak3stl1nk

    w3ak3stl1nk Notebook Consultant

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    adware isn't necessarily bad. It depends on what it is collecting.