A cautionary tale for you all.

[Nick]

Once a year or so, I like to wipe my dirve and do a completely fresh install of XP. Not only does it mean I get rid of umpteen billion things I don't want, it means I can do some of that 'house-keeping' we should all do and clear out a favourites list thats two screens long, get rid of old MS Money files and generally clean up my drive.

Now, after doing a fresh install of XP, the first thing to do is to start lobbing drivers back on for various things, the most important being the modem or, in my case, BB modem. Once you done that you can pootle off to the Windows Update page and within a few clicks of the mouse you can walk off and let it download and install the million and one updates.

WRONG!

What you should do, which I learnt to my cost, is install your firewall and anitvirus software immediately, BEFORE you even think of connecting to the net.

Now this may sound obvious, but think back to say a year or two ago, when most of us didn't have BB. How many of us bothered with firewalling our PCs? how many of us bothered with any antivirus software? You didn't really need to, as long as you were sensible and didn't open any suspicious looking mails, you'd be fine.

Back to the present....

I click through to Windows Update, it scans my PC, comes up with a gazillion files to install and I tell it to just get on with it. So we've started installing SP 1 when I get a message telling e that the PC will be shutting down in one minute.

Yep, I'd got the MSBlaster worm.

I let the PC shut down, re-boot and lob on Norton for Norton to tehn tell me it can neither fix, quarantine or delete the infected files... of which I have THREE!

So at 11.30pm last night I am once again doing a deep sector format of my C drive to eradicate a trio of viruses I picked up within 1 minute of being on the net.

The job, including updates was finally finished at 4am this morning. And yes, I was up for the whole thing.

Still, it did mean I got to watch the superb trio of Dunkirk programs I had taped last week.

[megah0]

Yup, we had a similar thing happen last summer, re-installed windows on one of the office machines, and blam Msblast and a crop of other network viruses cropped up almost immediately.

[mike_w]

No firewalls installed, no virus checkers installed, no MSBlaster... happier days

I was helping a friend installing his PC again, and he got Blaster. Just glad that I'd remembered to get the updates on my PC.

[CrapshoT]

yep this has happened to me as well lol
just re-installed windows,mobo drivers and cats then my bb modem and then i have to install the bt broadband software and thats when i got the msblast b*stard thing
another time installing the bt bb stuff on a m8s pc and it was the welch worm i caught for him lol

[Nick]

Sorry, should have said... I had TWO instances of MSBlaster and one of Welchia in that same instant... amazing, isn't it?

[Mozzer]

Haha, n00bs.
When that message comes up just go to Start > Run: shutdown -a
Abort the shutdown. I know what you mean though, i did a fresh XP install for someone a few days ago and msblast infected it straight away.

[joshwa]

Mcafee tends to sort out blaster when we get it on our work pcs - but recently we've had less and less of it popping up at work - hoorah!

[Steve]

I'm sat behind a linux gateway - no blaster for me.

However, it is shocking that people have a OS CD that is practically broken from the moment it is installed.

That is why I look forward to Windows XP with SP2 on a CD. Of course, the "Windows XP Reloaded" edition is going to be this with a few extra features in it too. Microsoft will win people back with their "security concious" edition of XP.

[M@rco]

Same thing happened to me cant belive that it is still going around the net.

[silent ben]

# Click Start and then click Control Panel.
# Click Performance and Maintenance.
# Click Administrative Tools.
# Double-click Services
# Double-click remote procedure call (RPC)
# Go to the recovery tab and change everything to "take no action"
# Double-click remote procedure call (RPC) Locator
# Click Stop, and then click OK.

[petrefax]

glad you've brought this up - my regular "wipe everything off & start afresh" is imminent & i know i'd have done exactly the same

[Agent]

Welcome to windows Deckard

/me lubs 3com firewall

[directhex]

/me lubs duron 750 on chaintech 7aja, with custom debian firewall setup

[shiato storm]

best way to defeat hackers...

buy a mac!

[malfunction]

Just a side note - I haven't tried it with Win XP (only 2K) but you can copy the contents of your install disk to a HDD, slipstream install the latest service pack and then burn the new files to a bootable disk... Google is your friend here. Nothing too complicated but you do need to follow the instructions.

[Nick]

buy a mac!

To quote the guy in the Mac Movie...

" I love this handle on top of it here... that's so you can attach a chain and use it as a BOAT ANCHOR!"