Well I clicked on a link above and it apparently took me out of this forum into one of the general forums, so excuse the double post. I have apparently got this particular piece of malware too. I started full scans of my spyware/malware programs last night to try to identify and clean out this virus, which I also got in the course of a recipe search, apparently from the Food Network. Unfortunately my son got up this morning, saw my netbook sitting there with the clamshell up, thought I'd left it on by accident, and shut it down. Now it won't boot, not even in safe mode. I know the winlogon.exe file was corrupted and had scheduled a boot scan in Avast, but what it does now is cycle constantly between the blue screen with a message that flashes past far too quickly for me to read it, and the windows boot screen. It never comes up. Since it was shut down before I got up this morning, I also didn't get to write down my XP license number, so even though I have access to an external DVD and an XP installation disk, I DON'T have a valid license # to enter. I fear my netbook is bricked, all because of a recipe for apple streusel pie.

This is a VERY nasty piece of malware. You CANNOT get rid of Braviax by simply deleting both files with that name in c:\windows and c:\windows\system32, or by unmarking it in MSCFG . On the next reboot or start, they will be back, along with everything else in the payload the nasty delivered. Braviax (which actually may have different names)is just part of the pack. One of my employees carelessly clicked on a link that came up in Google when she was searching for a church! The malware unpacked its payload. It scooted past our two active antivirus programs and firewall. Then it sent up a barrage of popups. Many were phony virus alerts; a click would have launched or downloaded more bad stuff. But some alerts also were coming from AVG, McAfee, and Windows. I quickly fired up AVG, it found an infection right away, but before the scan could complete, the virus disabled AVG. AVG and McAfee won't run now, not even in Safe Mode. The nasty also shut down our cable access to the Internet, hijacking our connection -- and started sending out ITS stuff from OUR PC. What a mess. It's going to take an expert to clean it out, damaged files will need to be reinstalled, and it may be that the best solution will be FORMAT C: and reinstall XP from scratch. The fact that we don't have a dedicated removal tool from any of the big antivirus publishers yet suggests how well the bad guys did their nasty work. Send Bill Gates back to the drawing board, with a stop in the woodshed along the way. ed p.

no no you do not clean anything with hijack this you must go to the landzdown forum that was listed and start a thread there in the hijackthis area then post your results from hijack this there in your post, also tell them everything you have done they will come and help you with step by step directions, the hijackthis produces a log file that is what you need to post there for them to review so they know what steps to take, the team there is one of the best on the net so be assured they will help you but it takes time it is not a one deal cure all it is a step by step proceedure. Just tell Corrine that I and Zep sent you there and you can also link back to this thread here so they can see this info. There have been many with that infection recently and they are able to be cleaned. go here register at the forum and post your thread in this area HijackThis Logs

Neal I take it you are a little intimidated with the inner workings of your computer? Nothing wrong with that. I was terrified the first few times I took the side cover off. However you must decide if you are going to get past that and fix it. You have asked for help and it has been given but you do not appear to have tried many of the suggestions so far, or have not told us what happened when you did try things. So far we know you cannot use Internet Explorer so you cannot download and install necessary updates from Microsoft. Nor can you go to online scans because most if not all of those are set up for IE. We know your AVG is at least 6 months out of date and the wrong version making it vitually useless. We know you do not have a firewall so anybody and everybody with the savvy can (and probably have) attack your computer and the dozens of phone home spies installed on your machine are taking possession. We know you cannot get to anti virus sites, for me that says virus's and trojans are in control of your computer. At this state it is pointless to worry about if your teenager's actions have caused the problems. Those actions may not have helped but the responsibility here is yours because you failed to take precautions needed for safe computing. From the computer you are using to post here download the free AVG 7.5 from here then from here download the free AVG anti spyware and from here download the free AdAwareSE and from here download the free Zonealarm firewall and finally from here download Crap Cleaner. Save all these to a thumb drive or burn to CD. Now on your computer and remove the cable to the internet for now. Then click Start, click Control panel, click Add/Remove programs. Remove AVG, AdAware and anything else that pertains to safety but is out of date. Install and run Crap Cleaner at the default settings, this will remove all the excess files and fragments of programs left by untidy uninstallers from all over your computer. Install AVG anti virus, AVG anti spyware, AdAware and Zonealarm. Allow each to do a full scan while still disconnected from the internet and allow Zonalarm to start. Then re-connect your internet connection and open each of these programs and get the latest updates. Then run the full scan with each again. Then visit Microsoft for all the Windows updates you are missing, I asume you have WindowsXP? Now Neal, if you are fearful of any of this say so and hopefully another poster will come along and tell you that what I have suggested will work - or disagree and tell you different things to try. There is nothing in this message to harm your computer.