Thank you, Malwarebytes!

I interrupt my regular blog for a special thank you message.  Thank you, Malwarebytes!

As I mentioned in this post here, I got hit with a nasty computer virus on my desktop PC recently.  i thought I had it pretty much fixed when I left home for my last trip to Vegas, only to discover I couldn't boot the PC upon my return.  Grrr....

I used "safe mode" to restore to the last good version of Windows, which wiped out all the stuff I had done (programs and settings, not personal files), but got me running again.  I figured out that one of the several malware programs I had used to combat the initial virus attack was causing a problem, so I removed it.

Only problem then was that I had these really annoying slow rolling popups from the bottom right corner of my browsers whenever I surfed the web.  Originally they said "recommended for you" but now they didn't say anything, it was just some annoying web advertising blocking most of the web page. Also, I would occasionally click on a link and get taken to a totally different site from what I clicked on.  Sometimes it was a bad site, sometimes it was a perfectly legitimate site, but it was annoying to say the least.

For example, even in blogger, when I was at my dashboard and hit the "stats" button, I sometimes would be taken to targel.com or some such, instead of seeing my stats.

Sometimes the Malwarebytes program would block access to the website, sometimes it would not.  Oddly enough, sometimes the Malwarebytes program would block access to my own blog posts if I used some of the "tinyurl" web addresses I had obtained for them to post on Twitter.  I don't think there's a problem with those but if you try to click on a link I've put in one of my posts to another post, and it doesn't work, that's probably why.  I'll try to correct them, but if you ever find a broken link in one of my posts, please drop me a line or put it in a comment.

Anyway, other the main, horrific virus that started the whole thing was removed, I still had the problem with the popups and the hijacked links.  My anti-virus (ESET) and Malwareybytes couldn't find anything wrong.

So I contacted support at Malwarebytes.  I am very, very impressed with their service. I received an email back in less than two hours.  A few emails back and forth, a few programs to run and a few logs to send them back, and the problem has been solved.  I ran something called "combo-fix" which deleted all the offensive files and registry entries.  No more link hijacking, no more of those slow-rolling pop-ups in the bottom right corner of my browsers.  All the instructions they sent were very easy to follow. 

In less than 18 hours the problem has been fixed!  Would have taken even less time if I had decided not to sleep last night.  So I cannot recommened Malwarebytes strongly enough.  Not only is their product great but their customer service is excellent.

I had already upgraded to the paid version of their program (it's only $25, a bargain), but I believe they would have helped me resolve this problem even if I had the free version.

Here's a link to their website.  If you've never had a problem like I had, you are lucky.  It was a true nightmare dealing with it.  Using their Malwarebytes program now, before you have a problem, might save you a ton of aggrevation, so consider this a word to the wise.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/