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my PC is a spam server.

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by computab

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Help, my PC is a spam server. Win XP home, SP2, Panda Antivirus 2006, Counterspy, Ad-Aware 1.06. I have updated & scanned with each but no luck. I am now getting hundreds of returned mail messages. I got a nasty message from Panda that if I didnot fix it, they would close my account, just because their software is not working!! I disabled the Panda firewall and installed Zonealarm, but no difference. I ran Rootkit Revealer, it showed two items, probably nothing bad. my PC was disconnected from the internet most of the time, but it runs very slow. I now run a backup disk which is not infected. How do I get rid of it, please?

5 replies

by b_pope

Your going to need to format the HD & reinstall the OS, including formating any other partitions on this HD.

You should take inventory of the software you currently have installed, since whatever has taken over your PC either came via a email or software you installed.

Also examine any software your going to install on this newly formated HD, I'm refering to any software you've downloaded from the Internet, gotten from friends, basically anything that isn't store bought before you install it.

You also need to look at your Internet connection, if cable contact your ISP to assign a new IP for you, if DSL turn your modem off for 30 seconds & then on again this should give you a new WAN IP address. If you use a router you should reset it & then make sure you assign a password.

Any Email addresses you currently have should also be changed, including Hotmail, Yahoo & Google & don't except attachments.

Formatting is the only way to be sure whatever is infecting your PC is gone.

by computab

That made no difference. I have formatted and reinstalled windows, but there are still hundreds of messages a day from postmaster and mailer-daemon, so I shall have to change my email address.

by jepott

Before doing a full re-install, try scanning your hard drive from a known healthy system - if one of the rootkits on your system truely is causing this then it will not be able to hide itself because another system is doing the scan. You might also try running Spybot and MS AntiSpyware (Beta1) - these might turn up something that Ad-Aware didn't. Hope you can reclaim your system!!

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