Wierdest behaviour I have ever heard of. I got infected with a trojan (virusblast) that tried to sell me software to ‘clean up spypware and viruses’. (It WAS the viruse).
I flashed my BIOS to an updated version, then installed a new hard drive – formatted it, and installed WIndows. The install took far, far longer than it should – on the order of three hours or so. The computer is slow as molasses now taking 3 to 5 minutes to boot into windows, 30 seconds or so to open a window or any other tasks.
This is on a new, virgin windows install on a brand new formatted HD. Then a window pops ups saying that there are 55 errors in my registry (BRAND NEW SYSTEM!) and directs me to a third party site (registryupdate.com) to install a ‘registry cleaner’ that I am supposed to pay for.
This is the exact same behaviour as the machine had before I stuck the new HD in, and installed windows – except the scam is now pointing to ‘registry update’ instead of virus blast. Obviously the data for this did not come from corruption on a hard drive – there was no old hard drive in the system – and I deleted all partitions and re-formatted the hard drive upon installing it. The virus must live in the BIOS – but how can this be!? I am so confused, and at a loss on the correct move to bring my machine back to life.
Any help appreciated.