Pulling the Dolphin's Beard

[dolphins_log]

We celebrated Valentines Day yesterday.  Juli has to work today.

I had to work a few hours yesterday, but that gave me a few hours to scramble and prepare.  On of the things that I did was buy some yellow roses, the chocolate, of course, and a silver heart pendant with some embedded diamonds.  ...okay, it's almost diamond dust, they are very small.

Then I shaved the beard.  Yes, the beard is gone.  What with the weight coming off the beard no longer needs to hide the chin.  ..well, that's not why I had it, but I just think I look better without it.  It was getting really gray too.   I'm so vain. 

After the shave I came down and looked at the yellow roses.  Yuck, they look dirty and wilty.  I ran out at the last minute and got some red ones. 
I got all dressed up for dinner,  ...okay, Northwest for dressed up; new blue jeans, dress shirt and red T-shirt.  ...and waited at the top of the stairs, holding the red roses, waiting   for Juli to come home.  The wait wasn't long.

What does Juli think of the new hubby?  She likes the total package, weather it has a beard or not.  I love this woman!

We went out to dinner at Anthony's in Gig Harbor.  The diet did not go to dinner with us.  We talked and ate, we drank wine, we had desert,  and had a great time.

After we got home we watched some Olympics.  While we watched I worked on my lap top.  Suddenly I get very aggressive pop up ads.  Yuck!  I haven't ever had those.  After some research with free scanners I found, yes indeed, I am infected with a serious malware.  It's a free scanner though, not a free removal.
I remembered miko2 posting about his fun and games with this type of problem, and I wasn't looking forward to it.

Now I have been using the free version of AVG, and I really do like it.  typographer and miertam introduced it to me.  I remember typographer saying once that he liked it enough to buy the upgraded version.  I studied what the upgraded version offered and decided that I liked what I saw.  So today I went ahead and bought it for our three home computers. 

It took me a while to get it downloaded on the main computer and then transferred to the laptop.  As soon as it was installed I started the scan and let it run

Meanwhile, just prior to all of this downloading, As Juli was getting ready for work, it struck me what I SHOULD has given her for Valentine's Day.  Metaphorical slap to the head and a mental "D'ho".  Juli likes the Pandora Charm Bracelet.  And Jared is advertising that they have them.  So after Juli left I raced down to Tacoma and walked into this MASSIVE Jewelry store.  Wow!  Complete with security gaurd standing by. 

I studied what they had and bought her a panda.  It's waiting for her on the mantel.

When I got home the first thing I looked at was the computer.  I Like AVG!  It found and zapped the evil malware no problems.  Now I have a happy, albeit slow and old, laptop.  It is a little workhorse again.

Other things done: 
De-scummed the shower. 
Removed and tossed old Christmas Decor that should have come down some time ago.
Did not, however, get to the vacuuming like I thought I would.

Comments

[chuck-melville.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't assume that malware is gone just yet. I'd keep a close watch on the computer for the next couple of weeks. If this is anything like the one I got infected with a few months back, it's just hiding on the hard drive and could reinfect at any time. It's got a way of getting around most of the anti-virus programs, even AVG.

Just keep an eye on your computer for awhile.

[dolphinchatter.livejournal.com]

You Jinx me, Mr. Man!

As soon as I read your comment I had a pop up.

---PTPTPTP---

[chuck-melville.livejournal.com]

What you have to do is check your Task Manager and look for an unfamiliar program running; most likely it will be a program identified only by a series of digits, or else something like Security Guard (or some similar name). Shut it off by way of the Task Manager. THEN use the AVG and whatever other Anti-Virus programs you have.

This thing has been going around for several months now. What it does is hide in the Boot Directory, and everytime you reboot the computer, it relaunches and reinfects. It's a very devious virus.

[chuck-melville.livejournal.com]

Also, look for a free download of Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware program -- that's what finally helped me kill the one that plagued me for several weeks.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

Spyware and Adware are not always the same as viruses. So relying on any single anti-virus software is not going to work for everything that you don't want there.

I used both the paid AVG and the free AdAware on my PCs. They ran on different schedules. And there was another anti-spyware program that I would occasionally run just to check.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

Also, frequently it is not the case that the software failed to find the virus and remove it, but rather that the user has gone back to the very same website and clicked on the same video, or link, or whatever, that originally installed it, and gotten yourself re-infected.

So when something comes back, the first thing you should do is try to find it's name, then search the various anti-virus/malware sites to get information on the malware and try to figure out how it got installed originally, so that you can stop going back to said site.