Virus, "System Securities," STOPzilla, and the Blue Screen of Death

[Disproportional]

While surfing the web (looking up brony gifs, to be more specific)*, I somehow contracted a virus. I didn't download anything, or at least knowingly do so. It is a rogue antivirus software known as "System Securities," that kept locking me out of firefox and demanding I pay $80 to help it purge benevolent files.

About a month ago I got a new computer, and somehow forgot to get an antivirus software (*Headdesk*) on it. In my panic of realizing I had a virus, I reverted to my save state from two days ago. That didn't work, so I manually found as many of the virus centers as I could and deleted them. That allowed me to get online and download STOPzilla. I cleaned up as best I could, fixing all the RegKeys that got infected. However, when I try to purge the rest of the virus (including several trojans and some sort of spy software), I get a blue screen of death. This also happens randomly when I'm on firefox in non-Safe Mode.

Anybody have any idea why this is happening and how to fix it? The
blue screen goes by WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to fast to read it.

For the record, I know virtually nothing about computers except that I like the internet and I would prefer not to wipe my games/files/OS.


*An attempt to immediately win over half the forum.

[Mutant Sheep]

While surfing the web (looking up brony gifs, to be more specific)*

*An attempt to immediately win over half the forum.

And make the other half be glad you got a virus? :smalltongue:
I'd suggest crying about it then asking the forum, because people on here are geniuseses wait for someone who has an answer to respond. I would ask any really good computer-ish people you know though, since they can go your place of dwelling and see the computer for themselves.

[Arminius]

I don't have any direct experience with dealing with this virus, but this seems to be a fairly complete guide for getting rid of it. (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-system-security-2011)

That still might not work, so be prepared for a potential reformat and reinstall of the os(ie back up data if you haven't already). I tend to be on the paranoid side, so I probably would have reformatted and reinstalled already. Hopefully, that won't be necessary in your case, but it is still a possibility.

In future, install an antivirus. Avast (http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download) is the one I use, and it only takes a couple minutes to install and register. There are other good ones out there too. I also recommend using the noscript add on for firefox. If you don't back up your data regularly, I recommend you do so in the future.

http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/4605/fluttershyfatalitybytak.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/fluttershyfatalitybytak.png/)

[factotum]

Right-click My Computer and select Properties. Assuming you're running Windows 7, select "Advanced System Settings" link at the left, click the Advanced tab in the dialog box that pops up, and click Settings... next to "Startup and Recovery". Untick the "Automatically restart" item under System Failure, then OK your way out of it.

This will mean the bluescreen will stay onscreen so you can actually see what it says. You'll have to manually reset the machine to restart it, but if you can see what the BSOD is it might help troubleshoot the problem.

[Jack Squat]

I'd first download a more powerful antivirus program to try and get rid of the rest of the viruses (I recommend Malwarebytes, Spybot Search and Destroy is pretty popular too). If you know as little about computers as you're saying, you really shouldn't be going through manually deleting files and changing the registry.

Once the virus is gone, stick in your boot disk and do a repair install. It should keep your stuff where it is, but backing up the important stuff beforehand isn't a bad idea. Then go and install Avast! antivirus. Last I read, StopZilla doesn't work great on browsers other than IE.

[Disproportional]

Update:
My computer is basically degenerating. I had on average thirty seconds in safe mode before it shut down, now its basically instantaneous. Im going to reformat and start over, if I can find the CDs.

Thanks for the advice! Worse comes to worse, at least I learned an important lesson:
Never Trust a Brony "Haters Gonna hate" gif

[OracleofWuffing]

Some new computers have their reinstall disks built in as a recovery partition. With newer OSes, a "Factory Restore" is displayed on the "Repair your computer" in the Advanced Startup Options (Press F8 as you turn on your computer). I wouldn't be able to help you out further on that process without knowing more about the computer you're working on there, though.

[factotum]

Thanks for the advice! Worse comes to worse, at least I learned an important lesson:
Never Trust a Brony "Haters Gonna hate" gif

There is practically no way a GIF can carry a virus. Likely that the site hosting the GIF infected your machine via some other vector--NoScript and/or a good virus scanner would have easily stopped that!

[Slayn82]

If you didn't carried your formatation, you could try to initialize your pc using linux throught a usb stick, and copy your relevant archives to another media. Then, you format. This is my standard procedure nowadays with dealing with windows troubles, and is relatively easy.