very scary afternoon on the computer
 

I somehow acquired a malware on my computer - called "Live Security Platinum". WOW did I have a hard time getting rid of it, took about two hours and was quite complicated. It disabled my usual security software and I had to restart in safe mode, using another laptop to read the instructions.

I don't think I clicked on anything although I may have. I was at Photobucket at the time. I have heard other warnings about this site but never had a problem before. Ironic thing was, I was just on there to delete photos, as I no longer need it now that ebay gives you 12 free photos per listing. You can bet I won't go back to Photobucket.

It is not a virus, but it wants you to buy their software, then they have your CC # and all kinds of heck breaks loose.

DH has that on his...our house guest inadvertently invited it in. When they leave, I will reformat his computer...faster and easier that getting rid of the nasty beast!

I just do a system restore and that usually takes care of anything I come across. Had one that when I started the computer, I had to push F1 or was it F2..did a system restore from there. Hope you have luck with your system.

I downloaded Malwarebytes and I believe that will "catch" it, if it happens again.

www.freemalware.com has FREE clean ups and it works. You can buy or just use it - safe site.

I got 3 trojans in less than a month! I keep telling DH that I don't go to "unsafe" sites like porn sites but he says anything can get hi-jacked & actually the more "innocent" a site seems, the better it is to target since people think only "bad" sites get infected. It's super annoying & I know one of these days my 'puter will just give up the ghost. That reminds me. I need to have DH back this up later today (just in case).

Often it seems even if you can get rid of the virus, the computer is never the same. I spent a lot of time debugging our PC, and then finally had to have it reformatted, and it's still not the same. What a shame it is that people put those viruses out there.

So aggravating!

If this happens you can create a restore point and have the computer go back to an earlier point of time when you did not have the virus or problem. You will not lose your information or have to re-load all your programs, whereas formatting will wipe out everything and you would need to spend a day loading everything again.

Now that is 2 people who mentioned system restore. I wonder why they had such elaborate instructions for getting rid of it if a system restore would have done it. I think it would have been easier. Does anyone have simple iinstructions for doing it?

I notice since adding Malwarebytes it has warned me of an infected site.