A Force 6 Cybercane is Approaching FAST !

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Well I thought that by safe mode booting and running my antispyware products I could weather this storm. It worked the first few times. It doesn't anymore.

I thought I was fighting Mirar and then Bookedspace, but at this point I think it is something far worse. My machine is a Win98 R2 with all the updates from Microsoft for the OS. I also run Computer Associates ETrust for anti-virus. I was quite happy with AdAware from Lavasoft, but when it was unable to function in regular mode, I bought XCleaner from XBlock. It worked one go round. Then it was disabled.

I tried to start from safe mode, and was able to get them both to work, once. The next time a mysterious gray box showed up next to the AdAware box in the running program area. No title and a seach of running programs via CTRL_ALT_DEL revealed nothing more than Explorer and AdAware. It would appear that whatever it is, it is buried deeply in the operating system.

I had kept a copy of the XCleaner Install program, renamed and in a different directory. I tried to copy it on top of the now bad install copy, renaming it a I went from DOS, but when I dropped back into Windows safe mode, it still hung in the middle of the install.

At this point I will quietly copy as much as I can of my personal data files onto CD's and DVD's and just leave the Outlook Express data alone. I will then go to a new email account and notify the people I want to hear from just what the name is. This is a tremendous waste of time. In terms of being a terrorist attack, I would say the time and data lost across the country will cost the US as many lives as 9/11. If the good doctor is trying to restore his computer, who's minding his/her patients ?

My four computer scheme, non-Microsoft Windows of any flavor, as awkward as it is, looks like it will be a necessity. I'm sure the Mac people are smiling, for now. Soon to get the last 5% of the market, the marketeers doing this crap will hit their machines too, and there are far fewer Mac specialists to fix the situation.

Web TV on an HD screen is beginning to sound good.....