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Why, thank you

Ah, the fertile earth, freshly tilled, dark and friable. Waiting…waiting…waiting to receive a big fat cat turd.

Poor old Uncle B, when he looked around to see Charlotte balanced happily athwart his newly dug pea patch. I don’t know which was more precious: the look of horror on his face, or the look of bliss on hers.

And that’s the sort of day we’ve both had: a bit in the shitter. He’s picked up a really enthusiastic bit of malware and I’ve been fruitlessly chasing bureaucratic moonbeams all day. Thus, blogging will consist of this single inspirational moment, frozen in time.

The chickens? Bright spot of the day, bless their little beaks. Growing bigger and bolder all the time.

Comments


Comment from Formally known as prints
Time: May 24, 2010, 10:57 pm

You can put this behind you. The cat did.


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: May 25, 2010, 1:06 am

The whole world is Charlotte’s toilet, as it is for all cats. 🙂


Comment from Randy Rager
Time: May 25, 2010, 1:54 am

IOBIT’s Advanced System Care. I swear by it.


Comment from EZnSF
Time: May 25, 2010, 2:04 am

Cat Diapers!!

(Can you tell I’ve never gotten along with cats?)


Comment from Oldcat
Time: May 25, 2010, 6:18 am

A note from Charlotte –

Hey its manure and nitrates! Its green!

Whiners.


Comment from tawny
Time: May 25, 2010, 12:05 pm

I’d advise Uncle Badger to get some Coleus Canina (Scaredy Cat) plants. Put them in pots for portability. I have one just by the part of my fence that next door’s moggy uses to enter my garden and my garden hasn’t been troubled by the cat since I’ve had it.


Comment from bill emory
Time: May 25, 2010, 12:05 pm

how do you get malware, how do you know?


Comment from Sporadic Small Arms Fire
Time: May 25, 2010, 2:39 pm

Cats are possibly the most gratifying cushions for a 190 miles per hour arrow. Cats… and socialists.

I am sure Coleus Canina plants will greatly inconvenience at least 1% of cats thusly persuading them to deposit their catty goodness elsewhere where the Coleus does not grow yet. Do these wondrous plants work on socialists or do I need to find another specie to persuade them to go elsewhere?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 25, 2010, 5:57 pm

That’s the annoying thing, bill — he was just looking up a quotation online. Clicked a Google link, and the next thing you know, he gets one of those fake operating system popups telling him he has a security problem and he should go buy some piece of software.

It’s 24 hours later, he’s tried every trick in the book, run all the recommended scanners. It looks like he’s going to have to give in and reformat the drive.

I caught a similar bug in a similar way some months ago — I did a Google images search and clicked on a picture of somebody’s big toe. Next thing you know, my machine exploded in popups. Took me about a week to get it all cleaned off. And I had to use a different machine to download stuff and sort it all out.

God help you if you were a one-computer family.

From what he was reading last night, he’s not alone — there’s a lot of VERY persistent malware out there right now.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: May 25, 2010, 6:31 pm

Stoatie, have him download malwarebytes anti-malware and run it. It’s about the only thing out there that works on that particular virus.

Also, if the machine won’t run executables anymore, there is a repair tool available. have him do a google search on exefix.com


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 25, 2010, 9:21 pm

Oh, Scoob, Malwarebytes was the first stop on the Panic Express. He’s run scans with that and SuperAntiSpyware and, um, AdAware and whatever…over and over and over. It quit connecting to the internet, which we fixed with a thing called winsockfix.exe or something. Now that won’t work.

He’s hauled out his ancient Compaq for the moment. The S, W and 2 keys don’t work on it.


Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: May 25, 2010, 9:25 pm

Oh shit!


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: May 25, 2010, 9:37 pm

Wonderful. What does Malwarebytes do if he tries to run an update? It is a serviced virus (Someone is constantly updating it) so that might tell me a bit more about how to fight it.

Also, what is the EXACT message it gives?


Comment from Allen
Time: May 25, 2010, 10:15 pm

One of the mysteries of life that I had hoped I would have solved by this time, but haven’t.

When you catch a cat doing their business they look satisfied. When you catch a dog they look embarrassed.


Comment from Randy Rager
Time: May 25, 2010, 11:00 pm

Has he tried IOBit’s Advanced System Care? Because that’s what I used to get rid of that very thing when I caught that particular malware from the hotel network in Chicago last year.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 25, 2010, 11:13 pm

We’ve been downloading programs on my machine and dropping them to a dongle, Scoob. He hasn’t gotten that machine online in some time (though he hasn’t tried in some time).

Coincidentally, he had already ordered a new, bigger hard drive for it and it’s on the way. He’s excellent about backing up data, so the current plan is to install the new drive, use the restore disks (it’s a ThinkPad) and reinstall his software.

He would’ve had to do that anyway, so…he’s in the back room now, trying to find all his applications. The sound is like unto angry rhinoceri mating.

First I’ve heard of IOBit, though, Randy. I’ll pass that along and see if he wants to make a last-ditch effort to save it.


Comment from nbpundit
Time: May 26, 2010, 2:21 am

Does he use Firefox? If so,
http://noscript.net/
hat tip: trioxin of GCP.


Comment from Sockless Joe
Time: May 26, 2010, 2:46 pm

FWIW, AVG makes a bootable antivirus CD that you can download for free. I’ve never used it, but it looks promising.

http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: May 26, 2010, 7:28 pm

Unfortunately, it is my experience that AVG cannot detect this particular virus. So far, only Malwarebytes has been ablet o kill it, and with the newer versions you kinda have to wrestle with it…..

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