Comments on: Virus disabled security updates, problem persists even after virus removed from Windows XP SP3

By: mitrum

mitrum — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:49:20 +0000

it seems your pc is infacted by Confiker Virus.
Symptoms of Conficker infection include the following:

•Access to security-related sites is blocked
•Access to admininistrator shared drives is denied
•Autorun.inf files are placed in the recycled directory etc.
please see this
http://www.microsoft.com/security/worms/conficker.aspx

http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat-center/conficker.aspx

By: chippy088

chippy088 — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:08:43 +0000

Can you start the updates manually?

I am wondering if a change has been made in the router that stopped access to the internet for the OS update scheduler?

Have you researched the actions the virus makes on systems? It is a good idea to do that, and depending on the source of the virus activity, you will get step by step checks to help identify the damage done to the system.

By: 197173

197173 — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 13:04:59 +0000

Could be a malware problem.

Just try this tool out and you are guarantee that the updates will be reenabled.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

By: joeby

joeby — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:39:51 +0000

I had a similar problem and managed to find the file that was reinstating the virus immediately after its deletion. Windows 7 would not delete the file because it said “the file name is too long……..”
I rebooted into safe mode and still could not delete it.
The only thing that did work was to boot up into safe mode with a command prompt and delete it through DOS.
Thank god it still works in todays sytems as It would have been a nightmare to have moved all my files toenable me to reformat.

By: valmsmith

valmsmith — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:21:01 +0000

In RE Jintek: Formatting the hard drive does NOT always work and that cure would have to be an absolutely last ditch attempt to rid the drive of the virus. Personally, if I have to reformat a drive for virus removal, I usually just replace the drive. That is a much more sure way of ridding one’s PC of culprits. Besides replacing the drive might just improve the PCs performance!

By: valmsmith

valmsmith — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:18:16 +0000

If a virus persists after cleaning on ANY Windows PC since ME, you need to FIRST turn off system restore on ALL drives, then do your cleaning, then reboot to see if the virus is gone. After ascertaining the virus is gone, THEN turn system restore back on, and reboot. IF you feel it necessary then run a scan one more time to make certain the intruder is still gone.

By: jinteik

jinteik — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:08:00 +0000

usually when I face with problems on virus that is too hard to handle / it might be removed but not, i will just format the pc..

unless you have an image then just restore it back.