Help for DSO Exploit

I am having a nervous breakdown officially now I think :headbang

My antivirus software does not detect anything wrong.

My spyware program detects DSO Exploit and the corresponding registry changes.

Dell is useless, they have no clue, they give the same answer to everything.... back up your files and reinstall Windows. I get that reply virtually every time I call. I still call them.. I never learn

Anyway, this thing has taken over my computer. Can't access some files, can't reset my homepage, get literally a dozen popups over and over as soon as I connect to the internet.

I'm also getting a message box (Installation Wizard) when I open my outlook express email saying something like "please wait while Windows XP prepares to install.... or configure.."

Anyone? I desparately don't want to have to reinstall Windows if at all possible

Thanks. It's been a bad day.
:flush

I'm not sure what program that you have running as far as windows is concerned , but I had a problem with my windows not so long ago. I used this site to update my windows programs and it fixed all my problems. It seems that there is a virus/worm or something that works off of microsoft ports and nortons or any anti-virus program doesn't recognize it as a problem because it thinks that it is a microsoft program.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../MS04-011.mspx

hopefully you can find your solution there, otherwise you may wanna try..

http://www.annoyances.org/

There are many posts about annoying stuff I'd look through that and if you don't happen to find any posts about similar problems
I'd post your problem in one of the proper forums for what ever discussion forum fits your system

By updating my windows I assume it configures the ports again to get rid of the program that was d/l .

Good luck

Thanks Bags. I had already downloaded another one I found from microsoft, to no avail. Tried this one too now. No change to my system.

More suggestions? At this point I'm trying anything.

Minraed, check your email. I sent you a fix for it.

Karahd, check your email. I sent you a reply to the email that you sent me with the fix in it :p'

and thank you by the way

thank you also to everyone else who has been trying to help me with this all day. You guys rock.
:cheek

oh, but still no luck in fixing my system, so suggestions are still welcome.

It's looking like doom

Don't feel bad, I've had the SAME exact thing happen at my work on my work PC and they had to fix me up.

I'm not sure what Adware/Spyware software that they used, but they had to run it over and over again. Finally, after like the 5th time, they removed ad/spyware from my machine and went in through the 'control panel' and made changes to internet options by changing my home page back to what it was "google", deleted all my cookies and cleared out my temp internet history files.

One other thing that they did was to delete everything in cache.

Try all those things right after running your spyware software and then do the rest (empty cache and change home page) before you even invoke internet explorer ( do not invoke internet explorer to get to your internet options...go through control panel).

I'm not certain any of this will work....just letting you know what all I noticed when my helpdesk folks fixed my VERY similar problem.

When this problem was on a PC that I do not use, but is in my house, the -only- way I was able to fix it was to format and reinstall. I'm sorry that it isn't what you want to hear, and if anyone knows better that's great, but I really think that in the end you're going to have to end up doing it. Even if you fix the problem I believe there'll be a TONNE of left over junk which will annoy you for days to come. I'm sorry, and it really sucks. :(

I forgot to mention, it might be worth posing the question in the techguy forums, where there's tonnes of help for that kind of stuff. Worth a shot anyway: http://forums.techguy.org/

I dunno if you've tried this yet or not, but if you use Windows XP, try turning off System Restore (Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools - System Restore). Sometimes spyware and viruses will hide in your restoration files. Turn off restore, run everything again (and maybe check out SpyBot: Search & Destroy as well as Ad-Aware and your virus scanner). Then reboot and see what happens. You can turn System Restore back on later if you want.

This is what I had to do to get some spyware off my computer once. It took over and I was afraid I'd have to reinstall Windows too. If that still doesn't work though I've got a friend I could ask who helped me once before when I was in the same situation again...

hmm, i saw reports all over the net that Spybot didn't fix the problem. But maybe that is no longer the case. Worth a try.

There has been alot of talk about this one on www.majorgeeks.com so we've been following that for some insight. I'll check out the techguy.org site too.

Seems it's got alot of people freaked out. Even read about it in the Globe and Mail national newspaper here. Maybe something will come up soon to fix it. In the meantime I'm trying everything just in case.

Thanks again for your suggestions. Most of these things work fine for a normal little invasion of spyware, this one just seems more ellusive.

anyway.... :(

Yeah, this one hit me too. I tried Ad-Aware repeatedly and it would find and isolate the problem, but it would re-download as soon as I got on IE... seems to me the problem is rooted in IE itself. Fortunately for me, it hit me just hours after I formatted and reinstalled already, so wiping my drive was nothing to me at that point. Shortly after, I redownloaded my AV and firewall, which had been turned off before the wipe. That person is banned from my computer.
I know that's really no help to you, but it does work even if it is a last resort. I hope you are more successful than I was.



By the way I would have come here for help in my original problem, but the problem was that I couldn't get Windows to come on. That pretty much made my computer a very big paperweight or foot prop. Anyway, all I lost was easily replaceable programs and irreplaceable movies and music.