Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tzechuk]

won't start after I've entered my password and hit return.

Let me try to explain this so it makes sense.

My computer is password protected so if on an off chance I have a guest staying over and would like to use my computer (never my husband's ), I can just create a new account for them with their own password.

Anyway, after I type in my password and hit enter, it reboots! Sometimes it does this several times before it'll boot me up and show me my desktop, sometimes it does it just once.

I don't know what to do. Hubby seems to think it's a virus problem.

Any thoughts and/or solutions?

TIA![/b]

[the saint]

Two options, one easy, one less so

First, the easy one, simply disconnect from the internet and reboot. Try logging in now.

Or if that doesn't help try the less easy route of rebooting into safe mode and logging into your admin to change your normal account

In English this means
reboot and keep pressing the F8 key until you interrupt the boot process
you will see some options
using your keyboard arrow keys, select safe mode (without network I think is best for this) and then telling it to boot
it will start up and take you to the welcome screen
there SHOULD be at least two accounts, yours and an Admin one
log in to admin (chances are the password is nothing at all) if you can
if you can, all well and good.
Go to your control panel > user accounts
use the dialogues there to change your normal account password or, better still, remove the password option totally (do you REALLY need password protection anyway? Any hack can get round it in seconds...)
reboot as normal and you should be able to log in to your normal account



It may be that you cannot login to Admin, if so, I don't know what to suggest really.

[redbird]

Unfortunately, I fear that your hubby is correct. These are the classic symptons for what we call the lsass virus, although it's really a version of the Sasser virus (which has nothing to do with not being able to throw the ball back to the pitcher btw). If your computer also mentions something about lsass.exe before it reboots, then you've got it for sure.

Btw, lsass.exe is a necessary exe to have on your computer. Don't delete it.

This may be a helpful source for Sasser info: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sasser.b.worm.html

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[tzechuk]

Thanks for that, Saint and redbird.

I've read the article, bird, but it says the patch thing doesn't work on windows 2000 - which is what I am using. How else can I solve this problem?!

[redbird]

How else can you solve the problem?

Er..... You can take out the hard drive and make it a slave in another computer to get your data off and then you could start fresh with your old computer. You might be able to do basically the same thing with a crossover cable. I don't know if reinstalling windows will fix this. It's not going to be easy. At work, we just put in a new drive and get the data back from our backup tapes.

I have no idea what the risks are for any of those options. If you can give me until Tuesday, I'll ask around.

[the saint]

ah windows 2000... you didn't mention that. I'm outta here...

What I will say tzechuck is that you really should have been running some good firewall and virus software as you now find yourself in the situation of potentially losing all the info on that hard drive.

If you do ever get in to the desktop again DO NOT shut it down but immediately back up all you need. I hope you have a CD or DVD writer or you will need to do as redbird says and use crossover cables to move files across to another computer.

[tzechuk]

I am just doing some scan now...

I have trojan dluca and this: MIME > Gift.zip - Win32/Bagle.gen.zip worm

Norton is detecting this... I wonder if it can fix it for me...

[the saint]

go to www.symantec.com and run a search for instructions on removing this trojan... glad you found out what it was.

[tzechuk]

Thanks dahlink! I believe the virus is now gone because I restarted my computer and got through in one go!

[redbird]

I hope it's gone, but you shouldn't count on it. If your computer's up and running, now's a good chance to backup your important files.

[tzechuk]

[redbird]

There's nothing decadent about taking care of a baby. I'd back up those photos and gather installation disks just in case, but you might be ok for a while on that computer, then. Good luck with it.