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New Laptop Having Problems


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I'm about to scream for three straight hours. Seriously. My old computer had the Alureon rootkit, and I bought a new, cheap laptop not three days ago, and now I think it has it, because I'm assuming Alureon got into an external flash drive I used on this laptop. I've used that drive on the netbook I'm currently typing this post on, however, so I'm not sure why this netbook wouldn't also be having problems.

My new laptop is getting random slowdowns after extended use, and it takes an extremely long time to boot up. I've utilized countless anti-malware programs (Security Essentials, Malwarebytes, Kapersky Antivirus, Kaperksy tdsskiller, Hitman Pro 3.5, Spybot Search & Destroy, etc), all to no avail. I had UAC on its second-highest setting in Windows 7 64-bit (third-notch, second-notch from the top), and nothing has helped me. I did a quick scan of the flash drive I inserted using Kapersky Antivirus before copying any files from it.

Does anyone know a method in which I can find out for sure I have the Alureon rootkit on this laptop? I don't know if I have it or not. I've used all those anti-malware programs and none of them have found a thing, so maybe I'm just being paranoid. But I don't understand why my brand new laptop would be acting this way when the only things I've installed are those programs, Chromium and Chrome, Steam, and Windows Live.

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While the rootkit is generally able to hide itself very effectively, circumstancial evidence of the infection may be found by examining network traffic and outbound connections (Netstat). The "FixMbr" command of the Windows Recovery Console and manual replacement of atapi.sys may be required before some anti-virus tools are able to find and clean an infection.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alureon#Removal

If you're really paranoid about it though, format the flash drive, do a clean install of Windows, and use a Linux LiveCD to copy your files over from your old PC. Also, don't run any executables or installers from your old computer, download everything from scratch.

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If you're really paranoid about it though, format the flash drive, do a clean install of Windows, and use a Linux LiveCD to copy your files over from your old PC. Also, don't run any executables or installers from your old computer, download everything from scratch.

I just used the HP recovery tool from the partition the laptop came with and now it's going much smoother.

The problem is I don't have a Windows 7 disc (I had the same problem with my computer -- I didn't have a Windows Vista disc, and there was no recovery partition), so I can't use the Recovery Console. It's a legit copy of Windows, it just didn't come with the Windows disc.

I'll try the Live CD method later, right now I'm just trying to get my programs back. All my .exe programs were saved on SkyDrive, so that wasn't the problem. I had just moved my media files (MP3s, videos) from the flash drive.

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Oh. My. God. It's happening again. After a clean reinstall of Windows from the recovery partition, and not using any programs from my old computer or even hooking up any external hard drive.

Words do not begin to explain how ****ed off I am. I think I'm going to go bang my head against a brick wall for a few hours.

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Not overly sure about how virus works but all a recovery partition is, is a hidden NTFS/FAT32 volume, so yeah, chances are it just replicated to that volume.

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Have you tried using the Microsoft Standalone Spysweeper? The link is here

I've had pretty good luck with this tool, I may not find everything, but it found somethings that Malwarebytes and a few other scanners missed.

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Oh. My. God. It's happening again. After a clean reinstall of Windows from the recovery partition, and not using any programs from my old computer or even hooking up any external hard drive.

Words do not begin to explain how ****ed off I am. I think I'm going to go bang my head against a brick wall for a few hours.

You may also want to scan your hard drive for bad sectors. New drives do have a better chance of dieing soon after purchase.

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You may also want to scan your hard drive for bad sectors. New drives do have a better chance of dieing soon after purchase.

Will do.

@ D!ABOL!C: Thanks, burned that to a disc and will give it a shot.

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Hello,

Considering you just purchased the notebook computer three days ago, I would suggest that you return it and exchange it for another one that works. Once you have it, disable AutoPlay (which should already be disabled for USB flash drives anyways, under Microsoft Windows 7), run Microsoft Update to get it patched, install your preferred security software and any applications you need on the computer. Any applications you install on the new computer should be loaded from the original installation media or downloaded direct from the author's web site. No torrents, cracks, keygens, warez and so forth. You can also look into installing supplemental security tools to your existing security setup like the MVP hosts file, BillP Studio's WinPatrol and so forth.

At that point, you should have a clean, secure computer. It might be a good idea to make a disk image/copy of it, so you can reload it if needed.

Once that's done, you begin copying your data from your old computer over to this new one.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

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May I just suggest that the slow downs may well be Windows 7 indexing. It happens for the first few days after a clean install (building up the prefetch adds to this as well).

If rootkit revealer and malwarebytes didn't find anything, I would be inclined to say that the computer is clean and something else is causing the issue. Have you removed all of the brand bloat?

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I checked for bad sectors, and Windows ended up repairing quite a few indexes and other issues. We'll see if that helps.

May I just suggest that the slow downs may well be Windows 7 indexing. It happens for the first few days after a clean install (building up the prefetch adds to this as well).

If rootkit revealer and malwarebytes didn't find anything, I would be inclined to say that the computer is clean and something else is causing the issue. Have you removed all of the brand bloat?

I don't know, I think it was the rootkit. My Internet slowed to an absolute crawl for no reason (and when the netbook connected to the same network it was blazing fast), Windows wouldn't let me do anything for minutes at a time (if I clicked on a pin on the task bar, for instance, nothing would happen for about five minutes; if I hovered over a pin it wouldn't even highlight the icon), and CTRL + ALT + DEL wouldn't work at all. Malwarebytes actually didn't find the rootkit on my computer when it got infected, MSE did. It didn't find it this time, however.

And, yes, removed all the bloatware except the HP stuff for using the recovery partition.

Should've gotten a Macbook

/s

Jus messin witcha

Hope you resolve the issue Quickly

Hah, I considered getting a Mac Mini, but this laptop was on sale and was $250 or so cheaper. I'm starting to wonder if it would've been better just to get the Mini, though.

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