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Are you trying to do this all wirelessly?

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Yes. Wireless USB adapter > Wireless router.

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Is there an option to go direct?

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Only by buying some very long cables! I can't leave cables trailing due to my little kid just starting to walk. And I can't nail them in place as I'm in a rented, not to mention listed, building! But the point is, the wireless USB is making a connection with the router and the signal strength is decent. Windows recognises that. It shows up as an available network. But it won't connect to it.

Nice one. I ask because the machine I had the problem with was a laptop. After the 'event' it was reluctant to connect to the network. At the time I decided that to avoid a repeat I'd keep that one off the net completely, having alternative access on another PC and the phone.

Instead I hooked the laptop to the router with a LAN cable to do the ESET scan. It didn't need to be connected for long.

Since them I've made no attempt to connect that lapdancer wireless-ly so I don't know if it still has issues with the network.

No virus troubles, though.

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Ohm's Law states, "Your PA isn't as powerful as you think it is".

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/

When I had a bad thingie that prevented me from using the computer at all I found a solution here that made all the badness go away and the sun to shine. It involved a USB key and a 2nd non-infected computer.

My main point being that these guys seem awfully good!

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Alexis -Cubase 6.5.0/SX3.1.1.944, XP SP2, 4GB RAM (1GB not accessible, but used just to balance the computer so it doesn't tip over); Delta 66 in Omni i/O Studio; Motif8; UAD-1

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Quote shufflebeat:

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Are you trying to do this all wirelessly?

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Yes. Wireless USB adapter > Wireless router.

Quote:

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Is there an option to go direct?

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Only by buying some very long cables! I can't leave cables trailing due to my little kid just starting to walk. And I can't nail them in place as I'm in a rented, not to mention listed, building! But the point is, the wireless USB is making a connection with the router and the signal strength is decent. Windows recognises that. It shows up as an available network. But it won't connect to it.

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http://www.maplin.co.uk/devolo-200mbps-powerline-kit-98007 No idea how reliable that is and I bet you can get it cheaper?
Dave.

Quote alexis:

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http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/

When I had a bad thingie that prevented me from using the computer at all I found a solution here that made all the badness go away and the sun to shine. It involved a USB key and a 2nd non-infected computer.

My main point being that these guys seem awfully good!

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There's ComboFix from Bleeping Computer.

When I get one of these on the bench I often start by booting into Safe Mode With Networking which allows me to get online to ESET Online Scanner. Then Malwarebytes, and if there are still problems, ComboFix.

Quote ef37a:

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Quote Mixedup:

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Quote shufflebeat:

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Are you trying to do this all wirelessly?

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Yes. Wireless USB adapter > Wireless router.

Quote:

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Is there an option to go direct?

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Only by buying some very long cables! I can't leave cables trailing due to my little kid just starting to walk. And I can't nail them in place as I'm in a rented, not to mention listed, building! But the point is, the wireless USB is making a connection with the router and the signal strength is decent. Windows recognises that. It shows up as an available network. But it won't connect to it.

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http://www.maplin.co.uk/devolo-200mbps-powerline-kit-98007 No idea how reliable that is and I bet you can get it cheaper?
Dave.

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I used one (pair) of those until it packed up about 6 months ago. It worked perfectly anywhere in the house but at the guts of £100 I chose not to replace it, everything was wireless by that point anyway.

I was going to suggest this by the way. If you can find it at a decent price it'd certainly do the job. If you can only find one, pm me, I've got a spare.

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Ohm's Law states, "Your PA isn't as powerful as you think it is".

http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/search/browse.jsp?N=411+208031+705&isRedire ct=true

I am not sure if different brands "talk" to each other but CPC certainly do singles and you might be able to match yours up from that list?

Ah! I see from the data sheet of one of them that they use encryption? I suppose it is possible to turn this off or it is password configurable in some way?
Dave.

Edited by ef37a (06/05/12 05:50 AM)

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Quote shufflebeat:

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Are you trying to do this all wirelessly?

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Yes. Wireless USB adapter > Wireless router.

Quote:

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Is there an option to go direct?

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Only by buying some very long cables! I can't leave cables trailing due to my little kid just starting to walk. And I can't nail them in place as I'm in a rented, not to mention listed, building! But the point is, the wireless USB is making a connection with the router and the signal strength is decent. Windows recognises that. It shows up as an available network. But it won't connect to it.

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You could try something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0046YXSZU/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00 - I have just bought one to connect my music PC to the router downstairs without running very long cables. Depends if you feel confident enough to set one up as a WiFi bridge (although it was very easy).

In my case it allows me to be online without enabling the disruptive WiFi adaptor in the computer.

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* Soundcloud *
* Bandcamp *

Maybe a bit later but I would recommend using this http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offlin e

It creates a boot CD/DVD running WinPE to scan your disk in offline mode, hence no files are in use and no nasty's can use obfuscation methods to hid from your AntiVirus scan

Quote Phil Aitman:

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Maybe a bit later but I would recommend using this http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offlin e

It creates a boot CD/DVD running WinPE to scan your disk in offline mode, hence no files are in use and no nasty's can use obfuscation methods to hid from your AntiVirus scan

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Ah! WinPE. One of my kids bought me "Windows 7 Administrators Pocket* Consultant" Bill Stanek.

The chapter about PE shows it to be a very powerful tool and one I might have a dabble with one day (but maybe only if I can find a sacreficial computer!).

*Heh! the book is 200x140x42mm and weighs a kilo!(and is $34.99)

Dave

I've gotten to the end, and realised some of the earlier content of this post is invalidated by what you've posted later in the post. That said, it'll probably be handy for someone Googling this in a few months time, so I'll leave it in.

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Quote Pete Kaine:

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You have got a firewall up and running haven't you?

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I'm less than well-versed on PC security. I've only really used Windows machines off-line and have stubbornly kept them that way until last month. I've typically accessed the web using my MacBook, which (though disappointing in many other repects) seems pretty robust on the web. As I understand it, Windows 7 Ultimate has a built in Firewall. Is this not sufficient? That's on and always has been.

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It should be on by default then, as should your router one to be honest as i don't expect that you've gone into either of them.

The fact that you've installed a security suite now which is indicating that your firewall is disabled (did I read that right?) however is a little more disconcerting. A number of trojans these days if delivered as a payload (inside an e-mail, via an infected installer or even in some cases via a hi-jacked website which maybe totally legit!) will disable the more popular security programs to try and make you more vulnerable.

See if you can esablish the name of the Trojan.

Try this route if it hasn't improved:

1. Get into safe mode and run that Trend Micro Housecall that was suggested and it should give you some smoking guns to google.

2. Find out more info and what fixes will fix them if it's combofix go and get it, if it's malwarebytes go get that etc....

3. Still in safe mode disable your system restore backups. I know it sounds counter intuitive but a lot of Tojans replicate and store themselves in there, knowing that they can't be touched if it's protected/enabled.

4. Run the tool to fix it as instructed by Bleeping Computer.

5. Reboot and go back into safe mode. Re-run Trend Micro Housecall to completion cleaning anything left over.

6. Install Spybot and patch. Install/Check your new antivirus software/firewall configurations are upto date and working.

7. Update windows and drivers whilst your here. It can't hurt and it's possible some of those updates might help you avoid futher complications.

8. Reboot back into windows and see if it behaves. Probably worth you testing/running any antivirus you have installed again at this point to both make sure everything is fine, and to ensure its being allowed to update as that's another thing Trojans have been known to halt.

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I have seemingly made some progress, though. I have the signal now showing as connected, both to the home network and to the internet via my router. Not that IE or Firefox seem to realise — I can't actually *access* the internet!

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The Trojan might have inserted a proxy address in order manipulate your data. Try checking your tcp/ip properties by following this guide : http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Change-TCP-IP-settings and ensure they are set to "Obtain Automatcially".

Then check your browsers too, they have roughly the same settings hidden away in the preferences menu and should both be set to Automatically detect settings.

These are what tell the computer/browsers to send out a request packet across the network in order for the router to transmit the infomation back that allows them to auto negotiate. The address that Dave mentioned elsewhere in thread (192.168.X.X) where the X.X is normally either 0.1. or 1.1. tend to be the home address for the router and 192.168.x.x is a private network detached from the internet that the router creates to house all of your private machines on. If machines are on that subnet they should be able to talk to each other and win7 boxes tend to be quite good at finding each other these days, althrough i'm not sure how well they locate macs???

I always found the "Bonjour" service quite good in these regards as it tends to be able to autonegotiate all sorts of firewall business and just let two machines talk to each other.... and being an Apple service it might make it easier if your trying to talk between a mac and a P.C. as it's got file transfer built into it already.

Anyway, tangent.

Grab a cable and just for half an hour move your pc to your router and set it up using a physical connection. Trying to set up a wifi connection, whilst not being sure if the wifi or router is broken, is just another head ache you don't need. Take a cable and connect the two and at least its another level of diagnostics you can rule out!

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No-one's answered my other question, though - regarding whether things that I have now removed might have done damage to registry settings etc, and if so how to track down the problems and resolve them.

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Probably because nobody can say anything for sure.

Yes, it's possible that they have, no you can't tell until something blatantly doesn't work.

Does this sound like your connection problem? Yes, but then the problem could be as simple as a miss-pointed DNS lookup (as I mention above) or your TCP/IP stack configuration could be stuffed (also see above) or the registry could just have a massive unfixable chunk missing... Or it could be fine, and this is another problem entirely.

If I was trying to troubleshoot this remotely, I'd tell you to copy off your data, re-software or roll back to an earlier backup at this point. Its one of those things that it I was in front of it I could probably fix it but it would either be something quick and simple but would take some clicking about to realise what it was, or something that took me the best part of a day and not without a lot of shouting and cursing! So in those regards it'd still probably be quicker to re-install from an archive as I'd strongly suspect it'd fall in the camp of the second outcome.

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Quote shufflebeat:

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Are you trying to do this all wirelessly?

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Yes. Wireless USB adapter > Wireless router.

Quote:

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Is there an option to go direct?

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Only by buying some very long cables! I can't leave cables trailing due to my little kid just starting to walk. And I can't nail them in place as I'm in a rented, not to mention listed, building! But the point is, the wireless USB is making a connection with the router and the signal strength is decent. Windows recognises that. It shows up as an available network. But it won't connect to it.

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Yeah, certainly sounds like a negotiation problem between the PC and Router which could have been caused by whatever got onto your machine. Do you know anyone with a networking background that could take a quick poke at you machine? Not promising they'd be able to fix it, but at least they could establish the problem and recommend the best course of action.

Oh, and one last question. In safe mode can you connect? I know you can't in regular windows but being able to connect in safe mode when you can't in windows isn't unknown and could prove a good diagnostic measure in the event it should happen to work in this instance.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Hi Pete (and others),

I'd already gone through the DNS, TCPIP etc, as that was advised on Microsoft's site, and all was showing as it should be, just not working.

The Windows Fireweall is showing as on. I just disabled it for a few seconds to see if it made a deifference. The Avira real time protection is working. Avira web protection can't be enabled. I'm assuming that something - whether other virus software or malware - is preventing it from running properly.

I did manage to get online with a cable, moving the router temporarily. Ran the on-line scans people suggested, but they've picked up nothing that the other five off-line ones didn't. Since running them I'm getting semi-regular BSODs and Windows is unable to update itself, despite being back online.

Interesting that restore points can reawaken unwanted nasties. Hadn't considered that, as Avira still shows as having nasties in quarantine despite going back to a restore point.

I think it's in my best interests to reformat the C drive and reinstall Windows. There are just too many unknowns here that it would take longer to do the detective and corrective work than to reinstall everything afresh.

Al my data is on external drives (which are now checked for viruses, trojans etc!), with C:\ dedicated to Windows, which makes this all rather easier.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

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I'd already gone through the DNS, TCPIP etc, as that was advised on Microsoft's site, and all was showing as it should be, just not working.

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Ahhh...

I've got a theory then. It's possible that something has hijacked you and repointed your machine to another proxy that was being used to either feed you malware or ad hijacks or allow it to be run as part of a botnet. It's also possible that one of the tools that managed to get rid of your infection might have been able to rip out the garbage, but in doing so may have left the hidden settings noted above in place which would leave you in a game of hide and seek in trying to fix them. That's kinda born out of :

Quote Mixedup:

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The Windows Fireweall is showing as on. I just disabled it for a few seconds to see if it made a deifference. The Avira real time protection is working. Avira web protection can't be enabled. I'm assuming that something - whether other virus software or malware - is preventing it from running properly.

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Your Avira comment is spot on. Somethings got itself tangled in there and killed everything that you'd try and use to fix it.

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I did manage to get online with a cable, moving the router temporarily. Ran the on-line scans people suggested, but they've picked up nothing that the other five off-line ones didn't. Since running them I'm getting semi-regular BSODs and Windows is unable to update itself, despite being back online.

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Blocking of updates is also a likely symptom

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I think it's in my best interests to reformat the C drive and reinstall Windows. There are just too many unknowns here that it would take longer to do the detective and corrective work than to reinstall everything afresh.

Al my data is on external drives (which are now checked for viruses, trojans etc!), with C:\ dedicated to Windows, which makes this all rather easier.

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I think your 100% right on that one. It's the reason I tend to advise the smallest OS partition you can get away with as it doesn't half speed things up if all your audio/video libiaries are stored on a nicely organized data drive and you can just flatten Windows should it all go wrong.... worth getting a clean image of your OS once you've got your programs on there too, for future insurance.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog