How do I get rid of viruses Norton finds but cannot delete?

April 10, 2004 5:44 PM

I can't get rid of some viruses on my computer. Norton can find them, but can't delete them. They're in my c:\RECYLER direcory. Little help? (More inside)

I can't find RECYCLER while in Windows, and although I can find it in DOS, I can't get a directory listing there. It tells me "volume (C:/RECYCLER) in serial drive has no label". Now everytime I reboot my computer, I get viagra sites in my bookmarks, and icons to go directly to those sites on my desktop. It's almost enough to make me stop visiting porn sites. Well, almost.

posted by Samsonov14 to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Empty your recycle bin maybe? The dir is marked as hidden, so it won't show up in explorer, but you can use the desktop icon to empty it. Unless of course something has messed with that as well, in which case I'm no help to you.
posted by Gamecat at 5:52 PM on April 10, 2004

Response by poster: I emptied the recycle bin, restarted the computer, and nothing changed. Also, my homepage in IE starts as "http://www.motor-search.info/". I'm running Norton again to see what it finds.
posted by Samsonov14 at 6:24 PM on April 10, 2004

I had a problem similar to this just a few days ago, where Norton could find the infected files, but gave me a "cannot gain access to the file" error instead of deleting them. Norton's website told me I should restart the computer in Safe Mode and run the scan again. It worked for me, and the virus was deleted, so it's worth a try. Since I can't seem to find the particular page on the site again, here are the instructions, I ran through them again just now and they worked:

Go to Start Menu, click Run
Type "msconfig" into the run box
Click the BOOT.INI tab
Click the "/SAFEBOOT" box and then Apply, and then Close
It will tell you to restart the computer, do that.
When the computer restarts it will be in safe mode.
Run the Norton scan again, it should be able to delete the infected files it finds.
Run "msconfig" again, go back and unclick "/SAFEBOOT"
Allow it to restart again, and you should be back in normal mode and the virus should be gone.

Hope that helps!
posted by nelleish at 6:26 PM on April 10, 2004

You appear to have some nastywear called "CoolWebSearch" -- see this forum page for some tips on getting rid of it.
posted by Zonker at 8:10 PM on April 10, 2004

If you have the coolwebsearch (which i had) the cwshredder works wonders. It should be on the link Zonker listed above.
posted by The God Complex at 12:43 AM on April 11, 2004

Response by poster: Nice. Thanks for your help. CWShredder did the trick.
posted by Samsonov14 at 10:36 PM on April 12, 2004