Attention Ebay Buyer! Some dangerous viruses detected in your system. Microsoft Windows XP files corrupted. This may lead to the destruction of important files in C:\WINDOWS. Download protection software now!
Click OK to download the antispyware. (Recommended)
Perhaps I should start with an explanation. This is a complicated and most aggravating situation.
It all started with Dr. Horrible. Yes, the amazing piece of amazingness that Joss Whedon did. I was obsessed with it while it was still free on the internet (I mean, completely gone-nuts-obsessed - I must have watched it the whole way through a couple dozen times), and I knew I would want to see it more after Whedon took it off the internet, and so I planned on actually buying it (that really is a concept; I have my ways of getting stuff from the internet for free by sticking my fingers in and seeing what falls out, and with the popularity of Dr. Horrible, I knew it would be relatively easy to find a free copy). I wanted to buy it because I loved it so much and wanted to do whatever I could to help support the creators. So, I went out and bought an iTunes gift card for myself on Saturday and purchased Dr. Horrible from iTunes.
I was ecstatic! I finally had Dr. Horrible on my computer! It had been nearly a week with no Dr. Horrible-ness, and I needed a fix. So, I hunkered myself down for a good forty-five minutes of awesomeness. Now, my computer has issues playing movie files in iTunes - it just doesn't have enough memory or something (I'm actually not sure if it's the memory or some other issue, but from my knowledge of computers, I assume it's the memory). I had noticed this issue that my computer has when trying to watch a video podcast I subscribe to (The Onion News Network). I found that to watch it, I would have to close iTunes (and everything else on my computer, including AIM, Internet Explorer, and anything else I might be working in (such as Word)), open Windows Explorer, find the files, and watch them in QuickTime for any semblance of smooth playing. It was annoying, but I lived. Anyways, Dr. Horrible gave me the same issues playing as did The Onion, and so I sighed, closed everything, and opened the files in QuickTime. It ran okay-ish, still lagging enough to bother me.
After some thought, I came up with a brilliant idea to solve the skipping. Burn the files onto a CD and watch it downstairs on the TV! I reopened iTunes, made a playlist with the Dr. Horrible files, and joyously clicked "Burn Disc", only to have the awful killjoy of an error message from iTunes: "None of the files can be burned". Turns out iTunes can't burn video discs, only audio ones. *retches* I did some more thinking, and then remembered a .zip archive I had seen in the Pics and Shit folder on my computer: Nero. I didn't remember downloading it, but I decided it would do nicely. I unzipped it and went through the whole installation process, throughout which, oddly, it kept referring to me as "Ebay Buyer". I didn't consider that this might not be legit; I figured, if it wasn't, avast! (my antivirus program) would catch it and alert me (it's been very good about that in the past). I guess the "Ebay Buyer" thing should have been was first red flag. Or maybe it was the fact that I didn't remember downloading it. Who knows what the first thing was. Anyways, I tried to use it, and just about two seconds after I had installed it, it was telling me the trial version had expired and it was unusable. And yet still, I (in all my never-ending wisdom), still didn't think it might not be legit. I thought that maybe it'd been installed before on this computer (possibly by my Uncle Mark, whose computer this was before he lent it to me).
I went about my business normally, but annoyed that I couldn't burn Dr. Horrible, for the next little bit. I don't remember exactly when everything went to hell, but the first sign was Windows Explorer. I opened a My Computer window, clicked the Up button to get to the Desktop, dealt with some files there, and then clicked on the My Computer icon from there to get back to see how much room I had on C:\, and the error message appeared. "Attention Ebay Buyer!" There were two choices: Yes and No. Of course, I had finally smelled the rat. I realized that this was no good, and went to try to avoid either choice (figuring both would lead me to trouble); I tried to click the little 'x' in the corner to close it, but it was greyed out. So, I did the only thing I could do. I clicked No. Now, I had been in Firefox doing some downloading (it's got a much better downloading engine than IE does), and after I clicked No, the evil program hijacked my Firefox tab and opened its own website, which Firefox proceeded to (urgently) warn me was a phishing scam and had malware and the like. I clicked the Firefox "Get Me Out Of Here!" thing that appeared and Firefox took me to my homepage. Shaken, I immediately started hunting down all of the Nero things that I could find on my computer and getting rid of them (this was tricky because Windows Explorer would generate the error message any time I went from any one folder to another - the only thing I could do to avoid the website was Ctrl-Alt-Del and end-task the error message (which would then bring down all of explorer, which would cause not only the window I was working in to close, but the desktop and start bar to go on the fritz for a minute). Once I was pretty sure I had gotten rid of everything, I scanned the entire computer with avast!, and then I went out to the Windows website (still from Firefox) and yoinked the Malware Removal Tool and ran it, too. Both things came up blank. Relieved, I decided to test it. I opened another Windows Explorer and attempted to go from My Computer to Desktop and back again. *DINK* Error message.
Angry and scared, I decided to try to find out what precisely was wrong by consulting the great internet. I had closed Firefox and decided to use Internet Explorer for this task. I open IE, and *DINKDINKDINKDINK* four Ebay Buyer messages, and all four of my tabs that I have auto-open on start were hijacked to the malware site. And IE doesn't have the saving "Get Me Out Of Here!" thing. I'm panicking, and so I just decide to Ctrl-Alt-Del and close IE by ending its process (a much faster and more brutal way of ending a program). Once it's down, I decide to purposefully elicit an error message from Windows Explorer and try ending various processes so I can figure out precisely what's causing the messages. I stick my fingers in and end every single process that I don't recognize, but the message is still there, staring and laughing at me.
I have resigned myself to not being able to use IE (which is the browser I generally prefer) and avoiding using Windows Explorer as much as possible until I can figure out precisely what's wrong. I've tried a lot of things (such as installing other antivirus programs, but those only resulted in a panicky few minutes where I thought I'd lost avast! and was left completely exposed), and once this blog entry is published, I'm going to try reinstalling IE. The explorer engine appears to be the only thing affected by the Ebay Buyer thing, so if the IE reinstall doesn't work, I'm going to try to find a way to reinstall Windows XP entirely (how I'll do that without a key, I have no idea). I've searched the 'net to try to find out what precisely causes the problem and how to get rid of it, but come up with nothing. If anyone has any ideas, please help!
And yeah, I know I fucked up. I fucked up badly. Oh well.
Click OK to download the antispyware. (Recommended)
Perhaps I should start with an explanation. This is a complicated and most aggravating situation.
It all started with Dr. Horrible. Yes, the amazing piece of amazingness that Joss Whedon did. I was obsessed with it while it was still free on the internet (I mean, completely gone-nuts-obsessed - I must have watched it the whole way through a couple dozen times), and I knew I would want to see it more after Whedon took it off the internet, and so I planned on actually buying it (that really is a concept; I have my ways of getting stuff from the internet for free by sticking my fingers in and seeing what falls out, and with the popularity of Dr. Horrible, I knew it would be relatively easy to find a free copy). I wanted to buy it because I loved it so much and wanted to do whatever I could to help support the creators. So, I went out and bought an iTunes gift card for myself on Saturday and purchased Dr. Horrible from iTunes.
I was ecstatic! I finally had Dr. Horrible on my computer! It had been nearly a week with no Dr. Horrible-ness, and I needed a fix. So, I hunkered myself down for a good forty-five minutes of awesomeness. Now, my computer has issues playing movie files in iTunes - it just doesn't have enough memory or something (I'm actually not sure if it's the memory or some other issue, but from my knowledge of computers, I assume it's the memory). I had noticed this issue that my computer has when trying to watch a video podcast I subscribe to (The Onion News Network). I found that to watch it, I would have to close iTunes (and everything else on my computer, including AIM, Internet Explorer, and anything else I might be working in (such as Word)), open Windows Explorer, find the files, and watch them in QuickTime for any semblance of smooth playing. It was annoying, but I lived. Anyways, Dr. Horrible gave me the same issues playing as did The Onion, and so I sighed, closed everything, and opened the files in QuickTime. It ran okay-ish, still lagging enough to bother me.
After some thought, I came up with a brilliant idea to solve the skipping. Burn the files onto a CD and watch it downstairs on the TV! I reopened iTunes, made a playlist with the Dr. Horrible files, and joyously clicked "Burn Disc", only to have the awful killjoy of an error message from iTunes: "None of the files can be burned". Turns out iTunes can't burn video discs, only audio ones. *retches* I did some more thinking, and then remembered a .zip archive I had seen in the Pics and Shit folder on my computer: Nero. I didn't remember downloading it, but I decided it would do nicely. I unzipped it and went through the whole installation process, throughout which, oddly, it kept referring to me as "Ebay Buyer". I didn't consider that this might not be legit; I figured, if it wasn't, avast! (my antivirus program) would catch it and alert me (it's been very good about that in the past). I guess the "Ebay Buyer" thing should have been was first red flag. Or maybe it was the fact that I didn't remember downloading it. Who knows what the first thing was. Anyways, I tried to use it, and just about two seconds after I had installed it, it was telling me the trial version had expired and it was unusable. And yet still, I (in all my never-ending wisdom), still didn't think it might not be legit. I thought that maybe it'd been installed before on this computer (possibly by my Uncle Mark, whose computer this was before he lent it to me).
I went about my business normally, but annoyed that I couldn't burn Dr. Horrible, for the next little bit. I don't remember exactly when everything went to hell, but the first sign was Windows Explorer. I opened a My Computer window, clicked the Up button to get to the Desktop, dealt with some files there, and then clicked on the My Computer icon from there to get back to see how much room I had on C:\, and the error message appeared. "Attention Ebay Buyer!" There were two choices: Yes and No. Of course, I had finally smelled the rat. I realized that this was no good, and went to try to avoid either choice (figuring both would lead me to trouble); I tried to click the little 'x' in the corner to close it, but it was greyed out. So, I did the only thing I could do. I clicked No. Now, I had been in Firefox doing some downloading (it's got a much better downloading engine than IE does), and after I clicked No, the evil program hijacked my Firefox tab and opened its own website, which Firefox proceeded to (urgently) warn me was a phishing scam and had malware and the like. I clicked the Firefox "Get Me Out Of Here!" thing that appeared and Firefox took me to my homepage. Shaken, I immediately started hunting down all of the Nero things that I could find on my computer and getting rid of them (this was tricky because Windows Explorer would generate the error message any time I went from any one folder to another - the only thing I could do to avoid the website was Ctrl-Alt-Del and end-task the error message (which would then bring down all of explorer, which would cause not only the window I was working in to close, but the desktop and start bar to go on the fritz for a minute). Once I was pretty sure I had gotten rid of everything, I scanned the entire computer with avast!, and then I went out to the Windows website (still from Firefox) and yoinked the Malware Removal Tool and ran it, too. Both things came up blank. Relieved, I decided to test it. I opened another Windows Explorer and attempted to go from My Computer to Desktop and back again. *DINK* Error message.
Angry and scared, I decided to try to find out what precisely was wrong by consulting the great internet. I had closed Firefox and decided to use Internet Explorer for this task. I open IE, and *DINKDINKDINKDINK* four Ebay Buyer messages, and all four of my tabs that I have auto-open on start were hijacked to the malware site. And IE doesn't have the saving "Get Me Out Of Here!" thing. I'm panicking, and so I just decide to Ctrl-Alt-Del and close IE by ending its process (a much faster and more brutal way of ending a program). Once it's down, I decide to purposefully elicit an error message from Windows Explorer and try ending various processes so I can figure out precisely what's causing the messages. I stick my fingers in and end every single process that I don't recognize, but the message is still there, staring and laughing at me.
I have resigned myself to not being able to use IE (which is the browser I generally prefer) and avoiding using Windows Explorer as much as possible until I can figure out precisely what's wrong. I've tried a lot of things (such as installing other antivirus programs, but those only resulted in a panicky few minutes where I thought I'd lost avast! and was left completely exposed), and once this blog entry is published, I'm going to try reinstalling IE. The explorer engine appears to be the only thing affected by the Ebay Buyer thing, so if the IE reinstall doesn't work, I'm going to try to find a way to reinstall Windows XP entirely (how I'll do that without a key, I have no idea). I've searched the 'net to try to find out what precisely causes the problem and how to get rid of it, but come up with nothing. If anyone has any ideas, please help!
And yeah, I know I fucked up. I fucked up badly. Oh well.
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