I have a virus!

[Judaeus Apella]

I keep getting "Data Execution Prevention - Microsoft Windows" followed by XP Explorer crashing and restarting, and half the time when this happens I find stuff missing, or windows shortcuts with their link details and information missing, accept the title and icon picture. I downloaded a bunch of pictures of tanks (for 3D modeling inspiration), and they were all deleted. I'm broke right now, any suggestions for a good free program that can get rid of this virus? The software I was using JUST expired and I hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet. I didn't like it and was going to look for something else, cause it was naggy and really annoying. Dammit.... that was fast.

[Buckeye]

Kaspersky, it works free for 30 days.
And also get Malwarebytes which is also free.

Good luck !

[kromosto]

yes Kaspersky is a good solution when it comes to viruses.

[yojimbo197]

Turn off system recovery and purge your recovery memory first. Restart.

Then use Comodo Cleaning Essentials and GMER after Malwarebytes and Kaspersky. You might also have to unhide all of your files/folders as well.

[Judaeus Apella]

............what? You need to talk to me about that like I have no idea what you're talking about, because I don't. lol I'm not a software repair type of guy, I hate doing it and know very little about it.

Well it found something it called a malware virus, last night. It deleted the installmate.dll, and I uninstalled the folder that was installed without my permission, that it was located in. You think that did it? I opened an install program to see wtf it was but nothing happened. It just closed as soon as it opened so I delete the entire folder and it took care of the dll.

[Daveburt714]

This usually works for me on stubborn stuff (not always though):

1) Download Malwarebytes (if you don't have it).
2) Open start menu and type "msconfig", when the box opens select "Diagnostic Startup" and reboot.
3) After the reboot, run Malwarebytes (in diagnostic mode) and delete everything it finds.
4) Reboot again, reopen msconfig and select "normal startup"
5) Reboot one last time and everything should be back to normal...

If it's not, follow the steps one more time and on step 3 write down the names/locations of malicious files and delete them
manually before moving on to step 4.

Hope this helps,
Dave

[NEOAethyr]

Personally the only method I would choose is to backup data, then del/format and re-install windows from scratch.

You can manually remove viruses but your system will still be half screwed from it.
Just saying, might as well fix the prob for real you know.

But whatevers, good luck to you on whatever you do.

[Evantaur]

i'm using avast
http://www.avast.com/index

[BeepBeep2]

Avast usually works well for free AV.
MalwareBytes works 90% of the time with a full scan, though I've seen it miss several things with latest definitions in the past.

I had a virus actually unmount and delete one of my data partitions once through the partition table as well as hide and change the attributes to hidden for most of the files on my C: Drive, over 400 GB of information, it took a long time to try to remount and recover all of it without damaging data.

[[XC] Oj101]

From my experience when I was a techy for several years (I estimate I cleaned viruses from around 2,000 PCs ):

Keep System Restore on until you're finished, an infected restore point is better than none at all
A combination of Malwarebytes, Spybot S&D and either Kaspersky or Avast is a pretty good option

[yojimbo197]

In my experience delousing XP machines, the System Restore is a likely target, especially the System Volume files. If the OP doesn't want to take the nuclear option(wiping and re-installing the OS), this is the next best place to start. Also, using GMER will help. Though using Malwarebytes, and Comodo Cleaning Essentials and or SpyBot first will usually catch about 90-99% of the nasties that an AV program. doesn't pickup.

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

For the real nasty stuff, rkill and combofix along with mbam should do the trick, but as others have all ready said the best option is a backing up and reformatting with a fresh Windows install.