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The curse continues: virus attack and McAfee’s betrayal

August 23, 2008 on 6:32 pm | In technology | No Comments

The store’s main computer was crippled, just as the store was opening for the day.

Friday night one of the employees at Saloni’s store called to say there was a virus warning appearing on the main computer. We go in, and discover that the machine is infected with the “AntiVirus 2009” malware. This is a nasty one — Saloni’s home computer got it a week ago, and it took a remote Symantec technician 5 hours to remove it fully!

Part One: 4 hours & $130

The McAfee Security Center software on the store PC was out-of-date. That’s probably why it didn’t catch it. I was able to remove the malware using another program, then update the McAfee software (that’s the $130) and run a quick scan. Uh oh: A half-dozen more trojan and malware programs were found and cleaned up.

It was getting close to midnight, so before leaving I kicked of a more-thorough scan of the PC, just to be sure. Came back in the morning to discover that McAfee had found 40 more trojans and malware programs on this machine. OMG. All were now quarantined, except for 4 of them that were living in copies of Windows’ “svchost.exe” file. Those, McAfeee indicated, needed to be scanned after a restart. So I restarted.

And then my real troubles began.

Part Two: Nine hours & $90

svchost.exe. is a part of the Windows XP operating system, and apparently whatever step McAfeee Security Center had taken to protect me caused this file to crash continuously. The PC had the same error message popping ut every 2-3 seconds. It lost its network connectivity. I could no longer copy files, nor could I launch McAfee any more. The store’s main computer was crippled, just as the store was opening for the day.

I fiddled, I tried System Restore (doesn’t work with svchost.exe disabled). I tried booting from an XP installer disc (installing over a newer version, it says, will delete all the files — not an option!). I finally give in and call McAfee.

The salesperson informs me that “Gold” technical support will be phone support where I have to perform all the actions myself, while with “Platinum” technical support the techie will remotely control my machine and do the work for me. I carefully, even abrasively ask: Will the Platinum support techie work with me to restore my network connectivity first? Yes, I’m told, he will; Platinum is better than Gold. So I pay my $90 and am transferred to a Platinum technician.

You know where this is headed. The Platinum tech tries several things, can’t get anything working, and tells me to call Microsoft. I call Dell support instead, since we bought the PC from them. Dell’s paid-support techie informs me that his systems are down and he can’t do anything. Please call back tomorrow. Let me repeat that: Dell’s paid support is down.

I come home to my workng machines, hoping that with fresh installed discs, working Internet access, a CD burner, a spare USB hard drive, that somehow I’ll be able to make a bootable drive to take to the store and fix that damn PC. Nothing works; the curse is complete.

Part Three: 5-7 business days & $130 or more

Saloni’s calls Best Buy’s Geek Squad. Their first available appointment for on-site PC troubleshooting is more than a month away. But we can drop off the computer at the store and they can fix it in 5-7 days. We dropped it off at the store tonight (they’re open till 10pm, which is pretty nice). Technician quickly assessed that the problem was data rather than physical, and put our desktop PC on a rack behind 10 other ones awaiting diagnostics and repair. Sigh. Time for bed.