Alpha Antivirus

[WhiteOx]

My nextdoor neighbour brings her pc over to see if I could fix it for her.
It had a screen with Alpha Antivirus popping up and had lost its internet connection.

Malwarebytes discovers 1143 malicious items.
ESET Smart Security discovers another 167 items.
After cleaning all this I could still not get an internet connection.

Further investigation reveals:
IP Address - 169.254.63.112
Subnet - 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway - blank

After much playing around and using the ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew commands I finally get back to the 198.162 range ... but the bloody thing will still not connect to the net.
I can ping other computers on the lan and visa versa but cannot connect to the net.

I'm thinking I'll try a linux live cd to see if I can get onto the net.
Hmmm ..... cannot boot from cd
I go into bios and find that bios cannot detect cd rom
I reboot pc and insert cd .. computer reads cd rom ok
I try to boot from cd again .. no go ???
I go into control panel and try Add/Remove windows components .. grrrr ... 'cannot read accessor.inf'
Try to boot from cd .. again still no go
I'm starting to think bios is trashed.

I use google on one of the other computers in my house and follow the instructions here:


SUCCESS! ... I have the internet back.

Now to tackle the cd rom issue.
I go to Acer website download and flash bios and all is good.

Has anybody had this problem before? it's the first time I've come across anything like this.

[WhiteOx]

Ooops .. I forgot.
Here's how to get rid of 'Alpha Antivirus' if anyone is unfortunate enough to get it.

[Neutral]

Thanks for the heads up on the Alpha Virus.
I can understand how the virus could effect operating system, network settings, ETC.
Do you also think that the virus was the cause of the bios problem or was that co-incidental?

Thanks

[WhiteOx]

I think it may have been one of the many other instances of malware.


The neighbours were using the net without any av or firewall, they probably have their banking details spread all over the world by now.

[Neutral]

Yeh I see things like that all the time, people have antivirus installed but not functioning or it's out dated & most of them don't really worry about the problem until the computer becomes un useable & pop ups start happening.

It's good you have it all sorted & unfortunate they hadn't come to see you sooner.

cheers

[myf360f1]

Well done WhiteOx, good explanation too.

Why would you not bother using AV,???? one of our contractors PC's got infected and shut her cash flow off for 2 weeks when I asked what AV she was using she said that the PC came with a trial of Nortons but she never renewed when it ran out. To make matters worse she did the same thing again 6 months later DOH.......................