virus that disables updates and such

[laxxe23]

Man its been forever since ive been here, well at least a long while.  I suffered a really bad virus twice (it seemed to be hiding on my portable HDD)
but anyways, the virus wouldnt let me go to alot of antivirus sites, or download and install the stuff i got from them through friends. 
It also made sure that a large amount of my windows features were disabled, system restore for example.  The way i found out about it was i was trying to update windows with net framework 3.5, but the download kept saying the site or connection was down.  I then browsed around the net after finding out that others could download it just fine.  Found on the microsoft forums that it was a virus and a a really crappy one at that.  anyways I had to restore my comp to factory settings, first time, i backed everything up onto my hdd, second time  happend about a week after.  During trying to update, I was like wtf and and realized it was on my hdd, that everything i had backed up on.  anywho long story short, viruses bad

so anyone else have virus stories?

[Facestab Fred]

I haven't had anything as bad as that ever since I switched to using Avast antivirus. http://www.avast.com/ Totally free, which makes it sound shady, but weekly crap like what you put up with has since vanished. Go ahead and blame me for advertising on this site, but it actually works unlike Norton or McAfee that still manage to miss tons while costing you as much. Better free and more functional than the expensive and shitty.

[FallenStar]

I can vouch for Avast - it saved me from a trojan that did exactly what the TC's virus did. I couldn't access any site to download an anti-virus program to save my neck - so I got around that by torrenting Avast.  xD

[laxxe23]

sadly avast didnt work in that case, My internet connection was also limited to wireless only (virus must have done something to the ethernet driver), so i couldnt follow the instructions on getting rid of that type of virus

[Neil]

Well, earlier this year, my friend's laptop got infected with a virus that doesn't allow him to access the internet. Whenever he tried to access the internet, a screen will pop up telling him to repent to God and not making anymore sins, and then the laptop will automatically shutdown.. The virus won't even allow him to use anti-virus or system restore. He had to re-format his laptop.

It's true, I'm not joking....

[readyaimrun]

I had a terrible time when i was trying to fix my friends laptop another friend gave me directions to go through regedit (something i never do) and I ended up putting the computer into and infinite
log-in state so then i just fdisk everything and re-installed.

[calientebarb1]

same thing happened to me. i ended up just reformatting the entire thing.

[laxxe23]

Doh' just had another virus, It could have hitched a ride on my portable backup drive.  So i needed to reformat again, so before i get my files back, im taking my HDD to a specialist for one of the $150 virus removal sessions for it. 

[sarafayer]

I think this is conficker... This was a virus that everyone was afraid of that started april 1, but was mainly targeted at the computers of companies and big businesses.
I didnt have this, but also I replaced the hard drive in my computer. There were conficker removal tools and things of the like, try this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007
If you go down to recovery it shows what to do.