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NaomiWiflath · 05-07-2008, 06:49 PM

Hi TSF, Long time no see.

I've found that the only viruses that I seem to get are bad registry keys that cause havoc on my system. Mind you, I don't get them often. But just today, I left my computer to go to school. Came back not 3 hours later to find bad things happening. Somehow something took a screen shot of my desktop, then hid all my icons. [sounds like a stupid prank- but I'm the only one who knows to work a computer that well in my home.]

After finally figuring out this was the problem, I tried to system restore. This didn't work [and hasn't for over a month. Could some of my protection programs be preventing it?] so I ran MSconfig and started in safe mode. Avast! and AVG free found nothing, but good Ol Spybot found the bad key. It was something that disabled my firewall among other things on my machine. Got rid of that, restarted, removed a BHO and here I am now. It's not like I go to bad websites. Rather, I did my Fafsa and was looking for scholarships last night.

I've had this happen before- where its only Spybot S & D that is able to find the keys. But How can I prevent bad keys from being made in the first place? Every so often a few get past all my AV's and everything. I actually have it configured so it asks me about any change first. And I haven't had any recently.

I am running SP2 Windows XP Home Edition
I have AVG Free, Avast! Anti Virus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad Aware 2007, Spyware Guard, & Spyware Blaster.

05-07-2008, 06:49 PM	#1 (permalink)
NaomiWiflath Registered User Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Minnesota Posts: 60 OS: XP Home Edition	How Do I Keep Naughty Regestry Keys out? Hi TSF, Long time no see. I've found that the only viruses that I seem to get are bad registry keys that cause havoc on my system. Mind you, I don't get them often. But just today, I left my computer to go to school. Came back not 3 hours later to find bad things happening. Somehow something took a screen shot of my desktop, then hid all my icons. [sounds like a stupid prank- but I'm the only one who knows to work a computer that well in my home.] After finally figuring out this was the problem, I tried to system restore. This didn't work [and hasn't for over a month. Could some of my protection programs be preventing it?] so I ran MSconfig and started in safe mode. Avast! and AVG free found nothing, but good Ol Spybot found the bad key. It was something that disabled my firewall among other things on my machine. Got rid of that, restarted, removed a BHO and here I am now. It's not like I go to bad websites. Rather, I did my Fafsa and was looking for scholarships last night. I've had this happen before- where its only Spybot S & D that is able to find the keys. But How can I prevent bad keys from being made in the first place? Every so often a few get past all my AV's and everything. I actually have it configured so it asks me about any change first. And I haven't had any recently. I am running SP2 Windows XP Home Edition I have AVG Free, Avast! Anti Virus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad Aware 2007, Spyware Guard, & Spyware Blaster.