Just for the record, I am running a Windows XP Pro on a Dell Inspiron 5150 computer. Today I used my Spybot (version 1.3) to download the latest malware definitions. I started the program and after a short time I noticed the “HELLZLITTLESPY” definition as one of the being found. I was not familiar with this spyware and before I did anything else I did a Google search and luckily found this web forum. When I went back and looked I discovered that this supposed malware was actually defining a part of the registry. So I was glad that I did not remove it.
I also noticed that one of the posts suggested that the problem might be that I was using the 1.3 version with the newer definitions causing the disastrous false positive. I was going to download the newest 1.5.2 version,as suggested when I noticed the other posts indicating that this very act seeming also produced the same boot up problem.
So at this time I am not going to do anything until this situation is cleared up. But I do appreciate this forums existence and will be following it for further information.
Best Regards,
Bill
I think it's always a good idea to confirm that anything any security program flags as 'malware' truly *is* malware. Any security program can come up with a false positive, and sometimes those can be devastating. I used to use ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite and it was constantly trying to nuke my graphics card software!
I learned to appreciate virustotal.com and just recently discovered
http://virusscan.jotti.org/ for getting a second opinion on individual files . When I want a second opinion with a full system scan, I use Bitdefender online for a full scan (set it to 'report only' first!) and I recently tried ESET for the first time a few days ago. Disable your resident antivirus before running these scanners. ESET provides the option to automatically clean. I did not let it do so. When I ran ESET, if it had found a problem, I would have made a note of it, researched it, and then decided if I wanted to redo the scan and let ESET clean it. Ewido is a good free online scanner as well. You can check there first to see if your resident AV is compatible before you run the scanner. It gives you the option of deciding what to do with any malware it finds as well. I used Panda a few years ago and it was good and thorough, as was Housecall. However, both these require constant back and forth between their server and your PC throughout the scan, and that takes too much bandwidth for that to be workable with my internet connection.
P.S. I'm not an expert, I'm just a person who used to own a Windows 98SE computer that required a LOT of pampering and 'fixing' to keep it running, and being in a rural area, I had to learn to do a lot by myself and ask a lot of questions at forums and e-mail lists because I simply had no other option. I now own a wonderfully stable XP Media Center Edition machine and it is very important to me that it STAY that way.
The laptop is a little over a week old and running beautifully, as only a new computer can, and I also want to keep it that way.
