Topic: Total purge of Firefox.

[Quemaqua]

I got a couple virii somehow (no fucking clue how, I'm always very conscious of what I'm doing), and also noticed a few things clogging up my Firefox.  Periodically windows have started spawning with ads for random anti-malware stuff regardless of the site I'm browsing.  I haven't been able to get AVG or Spybot to detect anything further, so I'm figuring I need to just gut Firefox of whatever could potentially be stuck in there.  But I'm terrible when it comes to this stuff because I pay no attention until a problem crops up.  Any suggestions?

Also, is there any good anti-spyware tool out there?  I used to use a combo of Spybot and Ad-Aware back when Ad-Aware wasn't shit, and they used to make up for each other's deficiencies.

[PyroMenace]

I actually use Google chrome, when I was flying back from CA, I stayed at my dads for a couple days where I used my brothers laptop, he had chrome on it and I really liked it, I then installed it on my desktop and its been doing great so far. I really love the thumbnail page showing all your most visited sites. But I'm also curious at what anti spyware stuff people use, I installed Ad-Aware then immediately uninstalled it, wow that shit got bad.

[idolminds]

Uninstall Firefox, then make sure to delete your user data directory.

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

Theres also a local settings directory you could get rid of.

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

This will get rid of everything and let you start fresh.

[Quemaqua]

Excellent, thanks.  I hate to do that since I spent so much time setting this motherfucker up the way I wanted it, though.  =T  I don't really like any other browsers much at the moment from what I've tried, though, so... meh.  Oh well.  I guess I don't have a choice.

[scottws]

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is the best anti-spyware/malware program I am aware of.

[scottws]

Just yesterday one of my desktop techs said that he found scareware (fake anti-virus programs) that Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware could not remove, but Microsoft Security Essentials was able to remove it.  This was the first I've heard of that happening.  It used to be that Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware was the only thing that could remove scareware and it never failed me.

[Quemaqua]

Well, I was able to remove an offending program myself without much issue, but there's something still around that's fucking with me.  AVG periodically detects trojans, Firefox is still opening popups at random intervals for no reason, and my sound drives now constantly fail me after the computer is one for a few hours.

[scottws]

You clearly still have a virus or virii.  If it were a computer I was working on, I would run Anti-Malware until it detected nothing, and then run a full system scan with the installed anti-virus product.  If possible, I would also run from a boot-time scanner (such as Eset SysRescue or Avast!'s built-in boot-time scanner).

If it continued to happen after that, I would restore to an image prior to the virus infection (if possible) or format and reinstall Windows.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, those are pretty much the remaining options.  I've tried everything else already.