Computer problem! Help!!

[waterinthefuel]

Last night my computer was working fine. It went into standby, and when I woke it up this afternoon it wouldn't get on the internet with any firewall software running. I had to disable zonealarm. I uninstalled that and installed another firewall program and the same thing happened. I uninstalled it and reinstalled zonealarm and the same thing is still happening. I made sure windows firewall is disabled, but I'm at a loss. This computer won't do a restore to a previous time so I'm in trouble. Help!!! What's causing this!?? I didn't download anything last night!!

Edit: AVG 8.5 comes up clean in a full system scan so its not a virus.

 

[Rocky_Road]

Re: Computer problem! Help!!

Might be the Conficker virus, that was scheduled to go into action on April 1.

Here is an article about it...and the ways to get rid of it. This is a Word file.

Oops...file is too big! If you want to read it, PM me your email address and I will send it to you as an attachment.

 

[beerfilter]

Re: Computer problem! Help!!

Download this on a known clean machine , save to a jumpdrive .
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Also , try the same with this .
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

And this :
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis

Once you have these on a jumpdrive , restart your puter into safe mode by pressing f8 before the windows splash screen appears .
You will have several options , select " safe mode with networking " and continue on .

Plug in the jumpdrive once you are fully booted and the desktop is up .

Now run the hijackthis program .

The hijackthis will give you a log file of everything running on your rig .
Post the results to their forum if you are not sure what is what .
You can seriously break your machine if you delete the wrong registry files !

Now , run the Malwarebytes installer . Once it installs , update it , then run a complete scan .
Delete all if it finds anything .

The final step is the avast .
Install it , update it , YES YOU WANT TO SCHEDULE A BOOT TIME SCAN !
After it restarts , use the evaluation version and run a complete scan of all your drives .
Registration is free , if you want to keep it beyond 60 days...

I always delete all instances of any infected files , but you may want to quarantine or heal them if you are not sure .

If installation of these programs freeze or hang under safe mode , you may have to manually root out a few files or registry entries to be able to complete installation .

As an example , XP PRO ANTIVIRUS ( rogue malware program ..) and some of its variants , frequently have files disguised as non plug and play drivers .
You have to disable them or delete them to get any removal tools to install , and often still have to rename the executables .

Depending on what you are dealing with , you may also have to rename the installer files to " whatever.exe" to get around the nasty .

This works for a wide range of trojans and malware .
I have yet to see Conficker , so I can't say if you have it , or , if this aproach would work .

As always , Google is your friend .

So are these sites :
http://www.pchell.com/
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/

Good luck !

 

[v1_0]

Re: Computer problem! Help!!

I've seen this sort of thing with a couple of the computers that I work with.

There seem to be a couple of causes of this, from the wireless/nic card not starting back up (power saving settings set to 'turn power off' card) to bad dns/ip.

It sounds to me that you *can* get to the internet if the firewall is shut down. In that case, I'd focus on the firewall.

Try the following:

Make sure that windows firewall is off if you have another firewall.

Turn on the 'all lock' in the firewall then turn it off again (enable all traffic). Then try to get on the internet.

Next, make sure your router/gateway is trusted by the firewall. In zone alarm, you set the zone (local) to a dns range. Make sure your home network is in this zone... After confirming, try to get on the internet.

Now, if you have "aquire IP address automatically" (DHCP)set, try the following:
From a command prompt - do a "ipconfig /flushdns" an "ipconfig /release" and an "ipconfig /renew". This will flush your DNS (domain name service), release your ip address, then renew your ip address.

If the ip address renew fails, you are probably (firewall) blocking ICM / DHCP / commands from your gateway or router. This is a good indication that your zones are set wrong, but it could be that you disabled those in the firewall (and hadn't reconnected since then).

If you have a "hardcoded" IP address, make sure that it's in your trusted/home zone.

If you are still having problems getting on the net, try the 'ping' command. From a command prompt, do something like "ping www.yahoo.com". If that fails "ping 69.147.76.15" (this is the IP address that I have for yahoo). If both fail, try to ping your router - use the "ipconfig" command to list your ip settings, the "Default Gateway" numbers - if not zeros - would be your router's 'internal' address so use those.

If all the pings fail, then you are not communicating even to your router. Turn off the firewall and try - if the ping suceed then we've just confirmed what we know. It's the firewall on your PC blocking outgoing traffic. Time to examine, in detail, the settings of the firewall. If this is the case, post back with which firewall you are using and we'll focus on it specifically.

If the ping to www.yahoo.com fails, but the ping to it's ip address suceeds - then you have a DNS issue. This could be the firewall blocking DNS type requests, or it could be something in your hosts files, etc. I'd run "hijack this" and post a log to their forums.

If the ping to www.yahoo.com suceeds, then I'm not sure. I've seen that before - I suspect that something is blocking port 80, but haven't found out how to fix that. Usually I reboot everything in the system - computer, router, modem - and it clears up.

 

[Moody Blue]

Re: Computer problem! Help!!

I've had the same thing happen when using Firefox and Zone Alarm. Firefox likes to automatically update itself periodically and when it has completed the update, my ZoneAlarm no longer allows access to the internet until I manually set the permissions for FireFox under ZoneAlarm.

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Computer problem! Help!!

You were very close. I discovered the problem that, for some reason, zonealarm got set to "high" security level which let nothing through, even when you tell it that its ok.

Why the other firewall program did the same thing is beyond me.

Once again, the Iboats clan jumps to the aid of their comrades. Thank you so much!