Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Trevor]

Please help a guy out.

I have a Toshiba Laptop that has viruses. I bought the laptop from a friend a month ago. It has some crappy antivirus program called Ahnlab. Every time I unistall it, it reinstalls itself an hour later. I manually removed the program from the program files but it apparently has some hidden reinstaller. Can't find it. No matter what I do, it appears again in an hour.

Anyway, that wouldn't be such a problem accept my hard drive obviously has viruses and the Ahnlab couldn't find them. So,I downloaded Norton and it found the bugs -- but it can't delete them. I click delete and it says it is deleting them, but when I look at the report they are still there. Not deleted. I tried to find the location of the infected files to remove them manually and it says the are in the folder -- C: RECYCLER -- but when I look in the C drive I can find no such folder. I suspect they are hidden but I don't know how to unhide files in XP.

So my question is, how do I get rid of the viruses and how do I get rid of this Ahnlab so Norton can do it's job?

Thanks

[EssPea]

Download a torrent of a fresh install of whatever OS you are using, burn it to disc and then stick it in and reinstall. This will wipe everything though, so make sure you have anything you want to keep backed up off the computer.

[Trevor]

Tried installing my existing crack of XP but the laptop won't take the serial, though it takes fine on all desktops. Tried the legit serial on the side of the laptop but it won't take that either.

[OneWayTraffic]

Plenty of serials online, take the laptop to a PC bang and try it out.

[Trevor]

Link?

[blackjack]

Try doing a virus check while in safe mode (hold f8 (i think) while the computer is loading). also try a number of different antivirals eg AVG, avast

here is a link to a whole heap of them http://www.download.com/Antivirus-Firewall-Spyware/2001-2023_4-0.html?tag=dir

[Trevor]

Thanks BlackJack

Here's an update. I abandoned ship because it seemed hopeless. I wiped the drive and borrowed a friends crack of XP whcih he said "worked on any computer"

Any computer except mine

So now I have a clean hard drive and no software.

Several mercenaries have contacted me offering to get the computer running again for between $20 and $75. I'm not sure what I am going to do. I am considering (gasp!) buying a legal copy of Windows but I haven't gottent to that drastic conclusion yet.

The thought of giving Bill Gates money is about as attractive to me as going up to a Korean immigration officer and giving him a big wet kiss

Not even sure legit software will work since there seems to be some proprietary version of windows that the Toshiba laptop needs.

Dunno.

What would you do with a clean drive and no serial that will work with your software?

[blackjack]

What about linux I have heard ubuntu is easy http://www.ubuntu.com/ (never tried it tho).

From what i understand, you can use open office (a free word and excel), surf the net and watch movies no problem with it.

What have you got to lose?

[Trevor]

Hmm. What the heck, I'll try it.

[Kimchi Cowboy]

[Trevor]

Thanks, Kim,

I already wiped the drive and I am trying to load an OS. Blackjack suggested Ubuntu (free, manageable, I can surf and WP). But I am still trying to figure out how to load windows without giving Bill Gates $259.