I'm in over my head!

[myth]

I have been fixing computers for a company, Whitemarsh Electric..... I have his main acounting PC in pices right in frount of me! He asked me to do a instal of windows XP, was running 2000 then 98... I stuck the CD in and did a upgrade... I reboted and I got a lass... bla bla bla.. Ok so I dont remember what it said! But it gave me 60 seconds to save my work before it shut my PC DOWN! I figured this problem had somthing to do with the upgrade, SO I did a clean instal! Well I get the same 60 seconds warning crap! The only thing I can come up with is its having a conflict with the hard ware! But I dont know how this could be posible! The PC is a old Dell, P3 500MHz, with 128 meg ram... a old network card and sound card... oh, and modem! Well I need help! FAST! I have 3 days left to fix this! Oh, wait "Lass.exe" is the problem... If you dont know what I'm talking about just hit Crtl-Alt-Delete Then kill lass.exe! So... is the hard ware the problem? could it be a driver conflict? I realy dont have time to investigate, since even in safe mode I only get 60 seconds! Oh, and I first get a error mesage before the 60 seconds warning.... The network card is a 3com.. the modem and sound card is unknown....

[Ceefer]

I think you've picked up the "W32.sasser.worm". There's some info in these links:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/Sec...ts/sasser.mspx
http://securityresponse.symantec.com...oval.tool.html

These links have instructions on how you can remove it and patch your system.

Good luck!!

[myth]

I think you've picked up the "W32.sasser.worm". There's some info in these links:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/Sec...ts/sasser.mspx
http://securityresponse.symantec.com...oval.tool.html

These links have instructions on how you can remove it and patch your system.

Good luck!!

Well I dont think it could have survived a clean instal/format.. how ever when I got this PC I removed 2,000 some viruses and over 200 spywares... so it could have a boot sector virus... This is the 9th PC I got from him to fix... They are all on the same network, none have any firewalls or virus scanners! Pluse he works at home so his kids use the pcs on the network... They can kill a new PC in under a week!

[Eddy396]

Unless you are a techy getting paid for fixing his pc. I would tell him to start been responsible for own pc, 2000 viruses is a joke. Its because of people like this we get crap like sp2 thrown at us. If i was you i would tell him his pc is ****ed and he needs a new one.

[myth]

Unless you are a techy getting paid for fixing his pc. I would tell him to start been responsible for own pc, 2000 viruses is a joke. Its because of people like this we get crap like sp2 thrown at us. If i was you i would tell him his pc is ****ed and he needs a new one.

He owns whitemarsh electric my step father is the fourman/journy man/master electrition... I worked for him for 2 summers... He pays me only when I bug him! But He paid me $200 for fixing the last one... He sends with them all the soft ware he wants me to instal as well! I get alot of good stuff! Pluse he is a big spender! If I wanted to I could get 200 a fix! But it just wouldnt feel right!

Oh, quick edit! When I said I get alot of good stuff I ment Legally!

[BUFF]

btw, XP & only 128Mb - not a good combo.

[myth]

btw, XP & only 128Mb - not a good combo.

lol... I told him that! But it was soooo mesed up to begin with once its fix it should be much faster! Even with XP instaled! The dam thing took like 10 mins to boot!

[directhex]

the 60 second warning occurs when a critical windows system service crahses - the default behaviour is to do an emergency shutdown.

these services VERY rarely die by themselves, the main culprits are the Blaster, Welchia and Sasser viruses, the former 2 attack the DCOM RPC service & the latter attacks the LSASS service.

you don't need to DO anything to catch them, just have a windows nt5 machine (2000, xp) connected to the net without a firewall for about 60 seconds (less with a fast office broadband connection).

the long-term solution is:

* on a safe machine, download a sensible firewall & burn to cd (sygate personal is free, spf.sygate.com, click downloads).

* unplug the target installation machine from the network, clean format

* install windows with the network unplugged, install sygate IMMEDIATELY after installing windows

* plug the network back in, go to windows update & get _EVERYTHING_ they have

[megah0]

also turn on windows XP firewall on the network adaptor before pluggin in the ethernet cable.

[[GSV]Trig]

If it wants to shutdown, gotto the start menu, pick run and then type in
shutdown -a
that'll stop the shutdown sequence...
That should help ya

[turkster]

Definately sounds like Sasser

[Moby-Dick]

remeber that an unpatched or unprotected machine has an average life expecanty of 20 minutes once connected to the web.

[[GSV]Trig]

20 Minutes, I must have been unlucky then as I got about a minute

[Moby-Dick]

its often less

worst one I (might) have done was test a modem on what I thought was a patched SQL box....
left it dialed up for 30 mins , caught slammer and nuked an entire WAN for 12 hours....

[turkster]

Yeah I once connected a clean install of Xp with no patchs or firewall to a very fast connection and got Welchia within about 20 seconds


Incidentally at the mo one of my systems has a new install of XP with no patches and is connected with a 56k connection behind a Smoothwall and running Kerio personal firewall, Norton antivirus and only Firelfox as browser.
I couldnt be bothered installing SP2 at the mo because of my slow connection .

What do you think are the chances of catching something nasty?

[Butuz]

When i moved house, i went from having isdn and a hardware firewall to a modem and nothing. AFter a clean win2k install, i hooked to the net to download some drivers, new versio of avg antivirus, and zonealarm, and by the time i had done that (10 mins) i was already infected with somesuch worm.

If you connect any system to the net without a firewall, be prepared for it to be riddled with spyware/viruses within the first few hours. That is NOT scaremongering, that is the truth and its time people woke up and took responsibility for their own PC's security.

Butuz