I discovered that his anti-virus program had been deactivated (was a free 90 day trial version, computer was about 18 months old), he had several spyware programs and viruses including the MS Blaster Worm, various backdoor Trojans, and at least one key logger Trojan (one that records your keystrokes in an effort to find your user ID and passwords when you use them to access secure sites).  His web browser had been hijacked to redirect his home page to one of the spyware preferred web pages rather than google, which he preferred to use.  He could reset it back to google, but every time he restarted the program, it changed back to the other site. The long distance calls were caused by several “adult natured” dialers installed when one of his sons visited a so-called free web site that claims you need to install some unknown plug-in before viewing their website.

The recently publicized Paris Hilton video is frequently used as the bait to get unsuspecting visitors to install these Active-X plug-ins in their Internet Explorer program.   When the computer is not in use, the dialer program periodically checks the modem for a dial tone and then dials out of country numbers, usually to the 809 area code, and this shows up on your phone bill as a long distance code.  If your computer doesn’t have a modem connected (most do) because you use Cable or DSL for your connection, your phone bill might not go through the roof, but your computer can still be infected with these spyware programs that will hijack your browser’s home page settings, cause pop-up ads of adult or commercial nature, or cause other problems.

The more obvious dialers actually made entries on the program file menu bar of Windows where you could manually decide to dial some 800 or long distance number (for a fee) to view an adult web site.  The more devious dialers were hidden in the windows/system directory or the windows/system32 directory and were loaded up into memory when the system started up each time.  Some of the dialers even used obvious pornographic icons for their DLL files; one showed a girl performing an act which I won’t describe here, but you get my point.

I spent over two hours cleaning up this infected computer after installing a new version of Norton System Works (with Anti-Virus), Spybot, manual deletion solutions and a visit to PC Hell and back.  Yes, that is a real place, and one that turned out to be really helpful.  I would encourage you to all visit this website at PCHell and glance at some of the suggested fixes they have for various computer woes.  At the risk of encouraging you to self-treat your own computer, their suggested fixes actually worked when I tried them.

Another client called me right after the first of the year to say his computer was making funny noises and was shutting down by itself frequently and then wouldn’t start up for an hour or longer.  I stopped by to take a look at his computer, removed the cover to inspect the fans on the CPU and power supply, and discovered one of the secondary heat sinks for the motherboard had broken loose and fallen into the bottom of the case.  A heat sink is a little flat square piece of aluminum with heat radiating fins for cooling.  The one on your CPU processor chip always has a fan attached to it so that air is forced across those fins to pull heat away from the processor.  With the extra heat not being removed from that secondary controller on the motherboard, and possibly because the heat sink might have shorted something out on its journey down the motherboard to the bottom of the case, his computer was over heating and shorting out, thus shutting down by itself.   When I opened the case, replaced the heat sink (hoping against hope that it hadn’t already overheated the controller) and applied power, the power supply started making noises that only Rice Crispies Cereal is supposed to make.  In addition to the snap, crackle, pop sounds, the power supply had lights flickering inside as circuits shorted out, and it began to smoke.  I carefully explained to the client that letting the smoke out of the power supply was a bad thing, and tried replacing the bad power supply with a new power supply.  The motherboard simply sat there saying “who me?” and refused to come back to life.

After obtaining a new computer the next day for the client, we discovered that not only did the motherboard get toasted the day before, but the old hard drive was down for the count as well.  So the search began for all of the client’s software installation CD’s, serial numbers, email address lists and a hundred other small details that we all take for granted on our own PC.  Naturally this client had ignored all of my columns about the need to back up his critical software and information, the need to keep your original software installation CDs, serial numbers and manuals in an organized fashion where you can find them when needed, etc.  His new computer now has a CDRW installed with software for backing up his computer and making disk images of his hard drive.  He had to purchase updated versions of the old software in order to keep using the same packages, or change his habits to use something less expensive for a solution.   I did explain some options about using off-site data backup services (like I mentioned a couple of months ago), disk imaging software like Norton’s Ghost, and simple ways to periodically back up your “my documents” folder onto a blank CD-R disk for safe keeping.  With a brand new (much faster) computer he shouldn’t need to worry as much about a complete failure like he had, but nobody is exempt from such thing happening at anytime.  As computers get older, the risk of hardware failure increases and the likelihood of having all of the original installation CDs available with serial numbers decreases.

Moral to the story, don’t think, “It can’t happen to me” because it can.  Lightening strikes, power surges or old age causing equipment failure can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost data, time and equipment if you don’t take steps now to back up your software configurations and data files.

Don’t forget…if you haven’t updated your anti-virus program since last month’s article you are at risk of catching some of the newer viruses that have been released this month.