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It was really a rather normal evening and I was
sitting around the house wondering what I should do. I really
didn't have many new options, so it was a choice between watching
something on TV and sitting at the computer. I was kind of in the
mood to listen to some music so I moved over to the computer chair
and put on my headset. I had a song that had been stuck in my head
for a very long time and I wanted to go online to see if I could
find it to download. After just a little bit of searching I, not
only found this one, but I also found a copy of the music video that
I could download. I downloaded both and then double clicked on the
video file.
The video started and I was having a good time
watching it when all of the sudden things started to go wrong. The
first thing that happened was that a lot of pop-up windows started
to appear before me. Most of them had pornographic material in them
and they seem to be coming up faster than I was able to close them.
It was then that I realized that I had actually downloaded a Trojan
horse virus that was attached to the music video. Although I didn't
know it this was really just the beginning of my problems.
After regaining control of my computer screen and
closing the video I started searching for some information about
what may have just happen to me. There were a lot of different
opinions about what it could be but my computer actually seen to
become normal again. I soon forgot about the virus, but
it did not forget about me. I didn't realize it, but the Trojan
horse had opened the doors to my computer and allowed a lot of
other viruses and spyware to enter in. Within a few days the
pop-ups were happening again almost nonstop and my normal computer
usage had slowed down to a crawl. The next day I tried to start my
computer but there were so many small viruses running that I was
unable to load Windows at all.
I used a friend's computer to be able to see if
there was a simple way to fix it. There are some technical forums
out there that will help you to regain control of your computer from
these viruses. I ran some small free programs in Windows safe mode
that helped to clean up enough of the viruses that I could load
Windows again. I then posted a log file of all my open programs to
the technical forum and they gave me step by step instructions on
how to clean the Trojan horse virus and all of the other viruses off
of my computer.
Thankfully I had a little bit of technical
knowledge and was able to follow the instructions. Some of the
things that I had to do included editing the registry on my computer
and searching for files in various places. It took a few hours but
I was able to successfully clean my computer from all of the trouble
that it had. Now, every time I download anything, I make sure to
run a virus check on it just to be sure.
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