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Mortymoose
Honorary Master
- Joined
- May 26, 2013
- Messages
- 13,287
Xp Nethood virus and The Missing Shortcuts!
So TIFU, bigtime.....
I'm an old geezer, who use to tinker around with DOS , 3.1, W95 and peaked with the XP os about 13 years ago.....
That was then , this is now...
Upstairs in one of the offices, resides an old XP machine, free from the internet , with a single printer plugged into it.... Steadfastly, humming away in the corner, avoiding the modern world, old faithful.....
with a dark secret.... a very dark secret....
Many years ago, an employee looking for s free printing resource for a child's school project unwittingly plugged in a flash drive..... at the same time copying over the ancient nethood virus... remember the one that jumps onto any flashdrive plugged into the machine , corrupting everything on the flash..... from that day forth......?
Back in the day it did not bother me too much, machine was never online, besides, no more staff took the chance of getting free printouts in the office afterhours, when one of their colleagues inadvertently found a childs month long project erased and corrupted...
SO for years, we carried on using it Pastel and minor excel documents....
This morning, the new printer arrived, I went to install it, The XP machine revealing her evil side that had laid dormant for so long.... not allowing me to install the drivers from the installation , throwing up Code 31 Errors ....Me being the clever guy tried putting the drivers on the usb, but Nethood awoke and spawned the crap out of that...
It was then that the day decided to take a turn for the worse....
I decided, that after hibernating on it for 10 years, that I, the old rusty novice, would look on the grand old web on how to delete the NETHOOD virus forever , allowing me to install the printer drivers...
So a few websites, told me .... no forced, coerced me into looking for irregular looking lines in the regedit...
WIndows->Current Version->Run and I found three entries, the one, was the normal one, the other two were diicing with death, they looked wrong, strange, their binary rapidly coming to an imminent end...
on C: ApplicationData\CIIZGF~1.vbs and wscript.exe //B"C"\Documents&Settings\User\Application Data\ozkvgpcbtp.vbs
I Know, I know .... I should have (1) back up (2) Researched further (3) Walked Away..... But I wanted to impress the English HO sitting across from me.... So, I deleted those tow strings in the registry..... then went to where thay had pointed to and deleted those files...
And rebooted....
Somewhere in my mind I could hear the words, "Let The Games Begin". my anus crawling back up inside as the desktop revealed herself to show most of the shortcuts( to Office documents) and the documents that reside on the desktop all faded out, the shortcut to Pastel was also faded out, I clicked Pastel , that started ,"Phew!", then I clicked on the one of the excel documents, it opened, "Nae! Bother, " I muttered under my muted breath, I closed off the excel spreadsheet and then the pigeons came home to roost.....All the shortcuts and documents on the desktop had gone, including the one to the Pastel, added to the dilemma, the English HO noticed the sweat running down the back of my blue t-shirt... I shuffled on the chair as she came over.... She pointed out that some of the other shortcuts to perform the Pastel backups were also missing.... She would now no longer be able to backup her pastel....
After playing around with the view options to display Hidden folders, the icons (but not the pastel shortcut for backups) reappeared, but once again, opening and closing the document made them all go away....
I kept stammering, "The stuff is still there, you just can't see it" , She was not amused, you know the anger that your bed partner get's when they are so angry, that they seem way too calm, talking softly..... I was nervous and afraid...
It is with this in mind, that I turn to my older brethren in this here forum, that know the XP operating system to assist, no advice me....
What the feck did I deleted in the registry, and how can I get it back.
For what it's worth, I have a brand new W10 laptop sitting on the table for the last 5 months waiting for the latest Pastel updates, as we planned to move over to the new PC end of last year...
Added to this, I can use the Pastel but not find the backup utility, called management something or other, as that disappeared with the faded desktop icons..
What I can do, is open the faded icons and then SAVE AS into my documents folder, where they regain their normal look and feel and do not disappear when the rest do...
If you are bored and have heard of such a thing and can assist me.... Please do, I t will be appreciated...
On the other hand, if I have just changed a minor setting and can not see it, please point it out and have a good laugh at me....
I thank you during this very difficult afternoon of my current life...
Moose.
So TIFU, bigtime.....
I'm an old geezer, who use to tinker around with DOS , 3.1, W95 and peaked with the XP os about 13 years ago.....
That was then , this is now...
Upstairs in one of the offices, resides an old XP machine, free from the internet , with a single printer plugged into it.... Steadfastly, humming away in the corner, avoiding the modern world, old faithful.....
with a dark secret.... a very dark secret....
Many years ago, an employee looking for s free printing resource for a child's school project unwittingly plugged in a flash drive..... at the same time copying over the ancient nethood virus... remember the one that jumps onto any flashdrive plugged into the machine , corrupting everything on the flash..... from that day forth......?
Back in the day it did not bother me too much, machine was never online, besides, no more staff took the chance of getting free printouts in the office afterhours, when one of their colleagues inadvertently found a childs month long project erased and corrupted...
SO for years, we carried on using it Pastel and minor excel documents....
This morning, the new printer arrived, I went to install it, The XP machine revealing her evil side that had laid dormant for so long.... not allowing me to install the drivers from the installation , throwing up Code 31 Errors ....Me being the clever guy tried putting the drivers on the usb, but Nethood awoke and spawned the crap out of that...
It was then that the day decided to take a turn for the worse....
I decided, that after hibernating on it for 10 years, that I, the old rusty novice, would look on the grand old web on how to delete the NETHOOD virus forever , allowing me to install the printer drivers...
So a few websites, told me .... no forced, coerced me into looking for irregular looking lines in the regedit...
WIndows->Current Version->Run and I found three entries, the one, was the normal one, the other two were diicing with death, they looked wrong, strange, their binary rapidly coming to an imminent end...
on C: ApplicationData\CIIZGF~1.vbs and wscript.exe //B"C"\Documents&Settings\User\Application Data\ozkvgpcbtp.vbs
I Know, I know .... I should have (1) back up (2) Researched further (3) Walked Away..... But I wanted to impress the English HO sitting across from me.... So, I deleted those tow strings in the registry..... then went to where thay had pointed to and deleted those files...
And rebooted....
Somewhere in my mind I could hear the words, "Let The Games Begin". my anus crawling back up inside as the desktop revealed herself to show most of the shortcuts( to Office documents) and the documents that reside on the desktop all faded out, the shortcut to Pastel was also faded out, I clicked Pastel , that started ,"Phew!", then I clicked on the one of the excel documents, it opened, "Nae! Bother, " I muttered under my muted breath, I closed off the excel spreadsheet and then the pigeons came home to roost.....All the shortcuts and documents on the desktop had gone, including the one to the Pastel, added to the dilemma, the English HO noticed the sweat running down the back of my blue t-shirt... I shuffled on the chair as she came over.... She pointed out that some of the other shortcuts to perform the Pastel backups were also missing.... She would now no longer be able to backup her pastel....
After playing around with the view options to display Hidden folders, the icons (but not the pastel shortcut for backups) reappeared, but once again, opening and closing the document made them all go away....
I kept stammering, "The stuff is still there, you just can't see it" , She was not amused, you know the anger that your bed partner get's when they are so angry, that they seem way too calm, talking softly..... I was nervous and afraid...
It is with this in mind, that I turn to my older brethren in this here forum, that know the XP operating system to assist, no advice me....
What the feck did I deleted in the registry, and how can I get it back.
For what it's worth, I have a brand new W10 laptop sitting on the table for the last 5 months waiting for the latest Pastel updates, as we planned to move over to the new PC end of last year...
Added to this, I can use the Pastel but not find the backup utility, called management something or other, as that disappeared with the faded desktop icons..
What I can do, is open the faded icons and then SAVE AS into my documents folder, where they regain their normal look and feel and do not disappear when the rest do...
If you are bored and have heard of such a thing and can assist me.... Please do, I t will be appreciated...
On the other hand, if I have just changed a minor setting and can not see it, please point it out and have a good laugh at me....
I thank you during this very difficult afternoon of my current life...
Moose.
