The Plot Thickens......and Sickens
Hi Guys
BAd News and maybe Good News:
First the Bad News:
I disabled AOLspyware and ran into some very unexpected prolems. First off I didn't want to eliminate AOLspyware just shut off the resident scanning. So I did and then restarted my computer. To be sure I did it right I opened AOLspyware and indeed it said it was turned off. I wanted to check if I could still run manual scans so I did. Wham! SPYSWEEPER goes crazy and gives me that message I have come to hate. Ok... Spysweeper thinks AOLspyware is a problem and we do have a cross connectivity problem between the scanners. I turn off the ALO scan. Wham! I get an AOl notification about that nasty Trojan Win32.Dialer.hc. Now this is odd. AOLspyware was doing a manual scan (which I turned off) but the notification comes from the resident scanner which should also be off. Hmmm! Then I investigate by trying to load SPYBOT. Spybot won't load???
I Try Lavasoft Adaware. It wont Load???? I try Quake II. (This may seem crazy but I'm trying to determine whether anything will load.) Quake II loads fine. I kill thie final boss again and shut off Quake II.
Okay maybe something is screwed up that has nothing to do with what I just did so I try to shut down the computer. It will not shut down. The menu appears but my cursor does the timeout thing for a sec and then the screen goes back to Windows XP. Now I am a little panicked as i suspect that by turning off AOLspyware I turned off the only program that actually said it blocked the trojan and maybe I have unwittingly unleashed all manner of horrors upon my machine so I do a forced shutdown. After 30 seconds I start up again. Now I decide that I should perhaps test if my anti-spyware programs work. I turn on AOLspyware. Nope doesn't work. SPYBOT....Nope. Lavasoft....Uh Uh. Quake II.....still okay. Okay I'm really in trouble right? Maybe not. I force a shutdown again and restart. Using Macafee Cleansweep I uninstall AOLspyware completely. Shut down and restart.
Now Spybot works. Lavasoft Works and QuakeII works. Okay Quake II always worked but just to be consistant I tried it anyway. Now for the really startling news......................................
AOLSPYWARE is still resident on my computor!!??
In my Icontray at the bottom of my screen the AOL icon still lists AOL spyware and when I click it voila up pops the AOLspyware screen. Now my suspicions are starting to zero in upon an apparent truth. I HAVE HAD TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF AOL SPYWARE ON MY SYSTEM. I stress the term DIFFERENT!?
I suspect that when AOL upgraded their spyware from the beta version to the regular version the beta version did not get unistalled properly. I should have seen this long ago as the two menus are different. The update file is outdated. I remember now thinking it odd that I got a different menu if I launched the program from the icontray than when I launched it from the start menu. I also remeber that my laptop has the same oddity and so does my business computor. All of my systems with AOLspyware have the two versions running simutaneously!
So now the Maybe Good news:
The Trojan Dialer does indeed appear to be a crossconnected foul up causing a false positive on both antispyware systems. But this is only a maybe good news because now I don't know what is causing my problems with my windows exporer, and the rightclick of my mouse. Oh Yeah and also why do I now get a "The form you requested is not available" message from AOl whenever I start it up???
If you have any suggested answers here let me know.